®I|6  ^.  ^.  ^tU  ^ikarg 


^ortlj  fliarolina  ^iatc  College 

P5 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  DATE 
INDICATED  BELOW  AND  IS  SUB- 
JECT TO  AN  OVERDUE  FINE  AS 
POSTED  AT  THE  CIRCULATION 
DESK. 


OUR  VANISHING  FORESTS 


:The^><^o. 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 


MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  •    BOMBAY  •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNB 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


OUR  VANISHING 
FORESTS 


BY 

ARTHUR  NEWTON  PACK 

Associate  Editor  Nature  Magazine 


Beta  ^orfe 
THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1923 
All  rights  reserved 


COP-VRIGHT,  1923. 

B'.  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Published  February,  1923. 


Printed  In  the  United  States  cf  America. 


t».o 


Si***'' 


To  My  Wife 

WHO  SHARED  WITH  ME 

THE   LABOR  AND  THE   PLEASURE 

OF  PREPARATION 


11041 


FOREWORD 

By  Col.  JVilliam  B.  Greeley, 
Chief  Forester  of  the  United  States. 

The  forest  is  the  background  of  America.  We 
have  built  enormous  industries  upon  its  resources. 
We  lead  the  nations  of  the  earth  in  using  its  prod- 
ucts. We  turn  to  the  woods  instinctively  for  recre- 
ation. The  forest  is  one  of  our  great  preservers. 
It  feeds  our  lakes  and  streams.  It  shelters  and  re- 
news our  wild  life.  It  has  given  moral  stamina, 
self-taught  resourcefulness,  and  bodily  vigor  to 
every  generation  of  Americans. 

It  is  time  we  balanced  accounts  with  our  forest. 
It  is  time  we  became  growers  as  well  as  users  of 
wood.  It  is  time  we  acquired  something  of  the 
forestry  sense  of  the  provident  folk  of  the  old  world 
— the  instinct  to  protect  the  woods,  to  plant  a  tree 
where  no  more  valuable  plant  will  grow.  It  is  time 
we  paid  heed  to  our  idle  acres — that  we  restored 
woods,  industries,  and  people  on  the  large  part  of 
our  soil  which  lacks  them  all. 

To  reach  this  goal  much  must  be  done  by  way  of 
public  effort.     We  need  more  public  forests — na- 


Vlll 

tional,  state,  municipal.  We  need  a  joining  of  hands 
on  all  sides  to  stamp  out  the  forest  fire.  We  need 
public  control  of  the  use  of  forest  lands — fairly  and 
reasonably  exercised.  But  first  of  all  we  need  for- 
est-wise Americans.  When  forestry  becomes  a  mat- 
ter of  common  interest  and  everyday  speech,  when 
the  idea  sinks  in  that  our  forests  are  going  the  way 
of  our  buffalo  unless  everyone  lends  a  hand,  the 
game  will  be  won. 

W.  B.  Greeley. 

United  States  Department  of  Agriculture, 
Forest  Service, 
Washington,  D.  C. 
June,  1922. 


PREFACE 

What  does  the  average  citizen  of  the  United 
States  know  about  trees?  He  knows  that  they  are 
beautiful,  and  he  dimly  recognizes  that  they  are  im- 
portant to  his  welfare.  Beyond  this  his  reflections 
seldom  go.  According  to  a  current  story  an  orator 
once  closed  his  stirring  address  with  this  perora- 
tion: "Is  there  a  man  in  this  audience  who  has  ever 
done  anything  to  prevent  the  destruction  of  our 
forests?"  Up  piped  a  small  and  timid  voice  from  a 
rear  seat,  "If  you  please,  Sir,  I've  shot  wood- 
peckers." This  is  not  perhaps  a  fair  measure  of 
the  extent  of  public  knowledge,  but  it  does  suggest 
that  the  public  is  withholding  its  attention  from  our 
great  and  vital  forest  problem. 

"Our  Vanishing  Forests"  is  not  written  for  for- 
esters or  for  those  who  already  possess  a  thorough 
knowledge  of  the  economic  importance  of  our  for- 
ests. It  is  designed  for  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Average 
Citizen,  the  man  and  woman  in  the  home  and  in 
every  walk  of  life,  for  it  is  upon  them  above  all 
others  that  the  solution  of  this  great  national  prob- 
lem depends.  For  the  information  briefly  summa- 
rized in  the  chapters  that  follow  the  author  is  deeplv 


grateful  to  many  whose  long  study  and  careful 
thought  have  done  much  for  forestry.  Especial 
thanks  are  due  to  Col.  William  B.  Greeley,  head 
of  the  United  States  Forest  Service,  who  not  only 
cooperated  in  furnishing  information,  but  also  per- 
sonally reviewed  the  manuscript  of  this  book;  to 
Nelson  C.  Brown,  Professor  of  Forest  Utilization 
at  New  York  State  College  of  Forestry,  a  widely 
recognized  authority  on  the  uses  of  wood;  and  final- 
ly, to  P.  S.  Ridsdale,  Editor  of  "Nature  Magazine," 
and  Philip  A.  Rollins,  author  and  historian,  whose 
suggestions  regarding  presentation  of  the  subject 
matter  proved  exceedingly  helpful. 

Arthur  Newton  Pack. 
Princeton,  N.  J. 


CONTENTS 

Page 

Chapter    1.     Such  Stuff  as  Homes  are  Made  of. . .  .  1 

Chapter    2.     Three  Thousand  a  Mile 8 

Chapter    3.     Pole  to  Pole  and  Pillar  to  Post 15 

Chapter    4.     Little    Wooden    Toothpicks     to     Big 

Lumber  Wagons 23 

Chapter    5.     The  Throne  of  King  Coal 36 

Chapter    6.     The  Paper  Age 42 

Chapter    7,     Forest  to  Printing  Press 52 

Chapter    8.     A  Friend  Unrecognized 59 

Chapter    9.     Not  Wood  Alone 67 

Chapter  10.     Trees  and  Torrents 75 

Chapter  11.     The  World  Out  of  Doors 83 

Chapter  12.     Impending  Catastrophe 90 

Chapter  13.     Three  Quarters  of  the  Way 99 

Chapter  14.     The  Government  Leads 110 

Chapter  15.     Wood  Lots  and  Wood  Crops 122 

Chapter  16.     Town  Forests 133 

Chapter  17.     Reforestation  to  Pay  Dividends 144 

Chapter  18.     Philanthropy  or  Efficiency 156 

Chapter  19.     The  Great  God  Competition 163 

Chapter  20.     The  Essence  of  Success 172 

Chapter  21.     A  Tree  for  a  Tree 183 

xi 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

Page 

We  people  of  the  United  States  consume  every  year  enough  wood  in 
the  form  of  lumber  to  build  and  furnish  a  double  row  of  five-room 
houses  which,  spaced  one  hundred  feet  apart,  would  extend  all 
the  way  from  New  York  to  Seattle,  south  to  San  Francisco  and 
back  again  via  New  Orleans 3 

The  old  Washington  Homestead  at  Mount  Vernon  stands  today  as  a 
proof  of  the  durability  of  wood 6 

The  125  miUion  new  ties  required  by  the  railroads  of  the  United 
States  every  year  would  be  sufficient  to  carry  a  track  five  times 
around  the  world  at  the  equator 9 

The  rate  of  consumption  by  our  railroads  attains  the  figure  of  four 
ties  every  second 12 

Only  when  radio  entirely  displaces  the  ordinary  telephone  will  wood 
poles  be  no  longer  needed 16 

Modern  methods  have  made  it  possible  for  the  ordinary  farmer  to 
treat  his  fence  posts  with  a  scientific  preservative  and  thereby 
obtain  from  them  a  maximum  of  service 18 

Without  wood  many  of  our  important  mining  industries  would  be 
forced  to  shut  down 20 

Barrels  are  generally  manufactured  piece-meal,  one  plant  making 
the  staves,  another  the  heads,  and  a  third  the  hoops 24 

The  various  steps  in  pencil  making 26 

From  the  use  of  wood  we  obtain  pleasure  in  many  ways 28 

The  cgmmon  match  and  the  safety  match.  The  first  is  made  in 
America  where  we  have  had  wood  in  abundance;  the  second  is 
made  in  Europe  where  wood  must  be  conserved 31 

The  heat  derived  from  one  ton  of  coal  costing  $14.00  and  one  cord  of 
wood  costing  $10.00  is  about  equal,  but  the  cord  of  wood  will 
weigh  two  tons,  take  up  more  storage  space  and  require  constant 
feeding  to  the  fire 39 

xiii 


XIV 

Page 
Our  annual  production  of  newsprint  paper  is  equivalent  to  a  strip  as 
wide  as  the  ordinary  daily  and  half  the  distance  to  the  sun  in 
length 43 

Every  day  in  the  year  several  thousand  trees  find  their  way  into 
our  wastebaskets 45 

Wood  pulp  in  the  form  of  papier  mache  is  often  pressed  into  molded 
ornaments  for  ceilings,  walls  and  mantel-pieces.  Many  lacquered 
bowls  and  dishes  are  also  made  from  wood  pulp  and  old  paper 
boiled  and  ground  up  with  glue  or  paste 47 

A  dense  and  continuous  forest  the  size  of  New  York  and  Pennsyl- 
vania together  might,  under  proper  management,  furnish  a 
perpetual  supply  of  wood  for  paper  manufacture 49 

The  wood  bolts  intended  for  pulp  manufacture  are  usually  floated 
down  the  river  to  the  mill  where  they  are  stacked  by  machinery 
in  great  piles  to  supply  the  machines  throughout  the  year 55 

These  and  countless  other  products  we  owe  to  the  chemicals  obtained 
from  wood  distillation 61 

By  the  use  of  portable  distillation  retorts  the  land  owner  who  desires 
to  get  rid  of  tree  stumps  may  obtain  at  least  a  partial  return  for 
his  trouble  and  labor 63 

Founding  the  maple  sugar  industry 69 

The  production  of  naval  stores  has  played  an  important  part  in  the 
economic  development  of  the  south 71 

For  catastrophies  of  this  nature  forest  planting  is  the  only  permanent 
remedy 76 

The  control  of  mountain  torrents  through  the  creation  of  forests 
means  a  broad  extension  of  irrigation  and  also  of  hydro-electric 
development 77 

Although  it  is  much  easier  to  obtain  tremendous  sums  for  engineering 
works  to  tap  and  control  a  known  water  supply,  a  number  of  our 
well  informed  men  beUeve  that  forest  planting  and  protection 
would  accomphsh  the  desired  object  better  and  more  cheaply  than 
an  excess  of  reservoir  construction 79 

Can  anyone  say  that  we  do  not  love  and  care  for  trees  when  we 
choose  them  as  memorials  to  those  who  fell  honorably  for  their 
country 84 

The  present  high  prices  of  furs  are  in  part  the  result  of  forest  destruc- 
tion       87 


XV 

Page 
If  the  present  rate  of  forest  destruction  is  maintained,  it  is  safe  to 
estimate  that  within  the  Hfetime  of  a  child  born  today  our  timber 
resources  will  have  practically  vanished 91 

A  large  portion  of  the  lumber  used  by  our  eastern  states  has  to  be 
hauled  clear  across  the  continent 93 

The  whole  forest  poHcy  of  European  nations  rests  upon  one  basic 
principle.  Every  time  they  cut  a  tree  they  take  care  that  another 
shall  grow  in  its  place 56 

Every  year  forest  fires  destroy  enough  good  timber  to  build  a  row  of  v 
five-room  frame  houses  spaced  one  hundred  feet  apart  on  both  -^ 
sides  of  a  highway  from  New  York  to  Chicago 100 

What  forest  fires  cost.  The  left  hand  pile  of  money  represents  the 
value  of  timber  and  property  destroyed  in  the  last  five  years  by 
forest  firos.  The  second  pile  represents  the  profits  which  might 
be  made  in  a  single  year  by  various  interests  concerned  in  building 
and  construction  if  the  wood  now  consumed  by  forest  fires  could 
be  saved  and  put  into  houses.  The  third  pile  represents  what 
bankers  and  real  estate  men  lose  every  year  as  the  indirect  result 
of  forest  fire  destruction 102 

Aerial  forest  patrol  is  a  valuable  weapon  against  the  forest  fire 
demon 104 

The  successful  operation  of  federal  forest  protection  depends  upon 
appropriations  from  Congress,  and  these  have  been  thoroughly 
inadequate  to  carry  on  the  work 106 

The  National  Forests  of  the  United  States.  The  shaded  areas 
represent  forest  lands  now  owned  and  controlled  by  the  United 
States  Department  of  Agriculture Ill 

Only  about  seventeen  per  cent  of  the  forest  land  of  the  United  States 
is  pubhcly  owned 113 

Not  over  five  per  cent  of  the  lumber  on  the  market  today  comes 
from  national  or  state  forests 118 

The  aggregate  of  all  the  farmers'  wood-lots  in  the  country  was  in  1915 
no  less  than  two  hundred  million  acres.  This  represents  an  area 
as  large  as  the  whole  of  the  New  England  states,  New  York, 
New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania,  Ohio,  Indiana  and  Illinois 124 

In  the  New  England  States  we  find  today  men  who  make  more 
money  out  of  the  annual  wood  crop  than  they  do  out  of  the  rest 
of  the  farm 126 


XVJ 

Page 

Telegraph  poles,  fence  posts,  railway  ties  and  cord  wood  represent 
a  few  of  the  products  of  the  farm  wood-lot 129. 

The  Town  Forest  movement  is  already  gaining  headway  in  America. 
Its  object  is  to  furnish  wood  products  free  of  transportation 
charges 134 

Thousands  of  cities,  towns  and  villages  throughout  the  United  States 
already  possess  vacant  land,  poor  farms,  school  property  or 
watershed  reserves  which  could  be  put  to  work  producing  timber.  .   136 

In  Europe  the  town  forest  plan  goes  far  toward  a  solution  of  the 
unemployment  problem.  Could  we  not  also  adopt  this  remedy.  .  .   140 

The  old  type  of  lumber  town  and  the  new.  To  the  left  of  the  sawmill 
shown  in  the  composite  picture  above  may  be  seen  the  temporary 
shacks  of  an  industry  intending  to  deforest  the  land  and  then  move 
on.  To  the  right  may  be  seen  the  lumber  town  of  today,  relying 
for  its  permanence  upon  a  policy  of  continued  reforestation 145 

Fattening  at  the  expense  of  the  young  forest 150 

Pulpwood  growing  has  passed  the  stage  of  ineffectual  philanthropic 

effort.  The  wood  supply  must  be  made  to  last  or  the  whole  paper^,  -- 

industry  will  fail 158 


"Blind  and  destructive  competition — or  cooperative  regulation —    ., 
which?" 16S> 

A  number  of  progressive  states  have  already  passed  legislation 
exempting,  or  assessing  at  a  nominal  value,  such  lands  as  are 
being  held  for  the  production  of  a  new  wood  crop 174 

It  is  the  poorest  sort  of  economy  to  grow  trees  at  great  expense  and 
then  burn  on  the  rubbish  pile  more  than  half  of  the  wood  content .  .    177 

Lumbering  is  today  a  wasteful  operation '^79  J 

A  Forest  Policy  in  six  words — Keep  out  fire  and  plant  trees 185/ 

Here  is  a  cartoon  taken  from  one  of  our  great  metropolitan  dailies 
showing  how  the  newspapers  of  the  country  are  conducting 
educational  work  for  a  forest  policy 187  « 


OUR  VANISHING  FORESTS 


CHAPTER  I 

Such  Stuff  as  Homes  are  Made  of 

Lumber   and  wood  for  our  homes;   why  we   build 
houses  of  wood ;  home  furnishings. 

Centuries  ago,  even  before  the  stone  age,  man's 
greatest  friend  was  the  forest,  but  it  is  hard  to  be- 
lieve that  he  was  then  any  more  dependent  upon  its 
products  than  we  in  America  are  today.  Perhaps 
the  fact  that  the  earliest  settlers  found  this  country 
one  almost  unbroken  expanse  of  timber  to  the  very 
limit  of  their  travels,  while  their  descendants  for 
two  centuries  contended  against  the  virgin  forest 
for  a  livelihood,  changed  the  character  of  western 
civilization.  At  any  rate,  we  have  been  the  last 
people  in  the  world  to  commence  to  outgrow  the 
wood-using  habit,  and  as  long  as  wood  gives  us  less 
expensive  dwellings  and  conveniences,  and  corre- 
spondingly higher  standards  of  living  than  are  found 
elsewhere  in  the  world,  why  should  we  change  ? 

We  people  of  the  United  States  consume  every 
year  enough  wood  in  the  form  of  lumber  alone  to 
1 


2  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

build  and  furnish  a  double  row  of  five-room  houses 
which,  spaced  one  hundred  feet  apart,  would  extend 
all  the  way  from  New  York  to  Seattle,  south  to  San 
Francisco  and  back  again  via  New  Orleans.  What 
do  we  use  it  for?  First  and  foremost  for  making 
homes.  "Home  Sweet  Home"  in  America  has  al- 
ways represented  not  a  stone  palace  but  a  frame 
cottage.  More  American  houses  are  built  of  wood 
than  of  brick,  tile,  stone  or  concrete  all  together. 
Many  so-called  fireproof  buildings  and  others  which 
do  not  show  a  wooden  exterior  have  partitions, 
window  frames,  interior  finish,  rafters  and  roofs  of 
wood,  while  stucco  houses  are  often  wood  through- 
out with  merely  an  outer  coating  of  plaster. 

Wood  has  been  for  many  years  and  still  remains 
the  cheapest  form  of  building  material.  For  beams, 
joists  and  floors,  it  is  the  lightest  and  the  most 
easily  workable.  It  lends  itself  readily  to  the  at- 
tractive results  of  painting  and  permits  a  variation 
of  individual  taste  running  all  the  way  from  colonial 
white  to  the  darkies'  idea  of  the  aurora  borealis.  A 
properly  built  wood  house  possesses  excellent  quali- 
ties of  insulation  against  heat  or  cold,  and,  indeed, 
scientific  tests  have  repeatedly  shown  that  wood 
houses  can  be  kept  cool  in  summer  and  warm  in 
winter  at  a  minimum  of  expense. 

Are  wood  houses  durable?  The  famous  old 
dwellings  of  New  England  dating  back  to  Revolu- 


SUCH   STUFF  AS  HOUSES  ARE  MADE  OF  3 

tionary  and  pre-Reyolutionary  times,  the  Washing- 
ton homestead  at  Mount  Vernon  and  countless 
others  throughout  the  older  section  of  our  country 
stand  in  silent  testimony.  With  the  conflicting  at- 
tractions of  baseball  and  the  "movies"  we  now  feel 
that  we  cannot  afford  to  take  the  same  time  and 
pains  in  building  construction  as  did  our  forefathers, 


|,j;s"'----"~ -.-..£$•.. 


YOM< 


We  people  of  the  United  States  consume  every  year  enough  wood  in 
the  form  of  lumber  to  build  and  furnish  a  double  row  of  five-room 
houses  which,  spaced  one  hundred  feet  apart,  would  extend  all  the  way 
from  New  York  to  Seattle,  south  to  San  Francisco  and  back  again  via 
New  Orleans. 


but  we  have  recently  discovered  a  few  secrets  that 
they  did  not  know.  How  many  people  have  repeat- 
edly re-floored  a  porch,  built  new  steps  and  renewed 
sills  as  part  of  the  supposedly  necessary  upkeep  of 


4  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

the  home,  simply  through  ignorance  of  the  fact  that 
decay  could  have  been  prevented.  Paint  has  a  mild- 
ly preservative  effect  which  is  more  or  less  tempo- 
rary, but  the  most  modern  and  effective  method  of 
preservation  is  obtained  by  impregnating  the  lumber 
with  coal-tar  creosote  or  a  similar  product.  These 
true  preservatives,  while  affording  a  less  pleasing  ap- 
pearance than  does  paint,  have  an  ability  to  resist  de- 
cay even  under  most  unfavorable  conditions,  and,  as 
a  protection  for  the  under  and  invisible  portions  of 
any  wood  structure,  they  are  of  the  greatest  value. 
The  United  States  Forest  Service  estimates  that  no 
less  than  half  of  all  the  lumber  consumed  in  the 
United  States  could  be  thus  profitably  treated,  and, 
while  railroads,  engineers  and  bridge  building  com- 
panies now  use  creosoted  timber  as  a  matter  of 
course,  it  is  to  be  regretted  that  more  of  our 
architects,  builders  and  lumber  dealers  do  not  avail 
themselves  of  its  beneficial  qualities. 

The  most  discussed  of  all  wooden  house  problems 
is  the  fire  hazard,  and  nowhere  have  substitutes 
made  more  headway  in  the  popular  mind  than  in 
regard  to  the  wood  roof  question.  The  makers  of 
asbestos  shingles  and  other  patent  roofing  materials 
play  up  one  set  of  statistics  in  their  extensive  adver- 
tising campaigns,  while  the  adherents  of  wood  put 
forward  other  and  equally  convincing  facts.     One 


SUCH  STUFF  AS  HOUSES  ARE  MADE  OF  5 

city  enacts  a  regulation  against  the  use  of  wood 
roofs  in  congested  districts,  while  simultaneously 
the  fire  chief  of  another  states  that  if  wood  roofs 
were  the  only  fire  hazard  with  which  he  had  to  deal, 
he  would  recommend  that  the  fire  department  be 
disbanded  forthwith.  Dallas,  Texas,  rebuilt  after 
its  conflagration,  enacted  a  law  against  wood 
shingles  only  to  repeal  it  a  few  years  later.  The 
great  fire  of  Chicago  was  stopped  in  a  wooden 
house.  A  poorly  constructed  roof  of  too  thin  and 
improperly  fastened  shingles,  which  easily  cup  and 
warp  to  form  a  catch-all  for  sparks,  is,  of  course,  a 
disgrace  to  any  community.  This  applies  equally, 
however,  to  a  house  with  a  slate  roof  and  a  defec- 
tively built  chimney.  Properly  laid  wood  shingles 
treated  with  a  creosote  stain  will  not  readily  cup, 
and  a  roof  thus  constructed  is  not  in  itself  a  serious 
menace. 

The  use  of  wood  for  furnishings  within  the  home 
is  of  equal  interest.  The  chair  you  sit  in  is  a  forest 
product,  the  table  beside  you,  perhaps  the  bed  in 
which  you  sleep.  There  is  a  story  in  every  piece. 
Was  that  desk  perhaps  a  family  heirloom  testifying 
to  the  sturdy  construction  and  finer  art  of  bygone 
generations?  Look  at  it  carefully.  Perhaps  it  is 
rather  a  specimen  of  the  cunning  machine-made 
substitution  now  so  frequently  practiced  with  the 


OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 


growing  scarcity  of  really  fine  hardwoods,  an  inex- 
pensive frame  coated  with  thin  sheets  of  handsomely 
grained  veneer.  Our  best  native  woods  for  furniture 
making  are  white  oak,  hard  maple  and  black  walnut. 
Mahogany  does  not  grow  in  the  United  States,  nor 
does  the  beautiful  Circassian  walnut,  but  they  are 


The  old  Washington  Homestead  at  Mount  Vernon  stands  today  as  a 
proof  of  the  durability  of  wood. 

both  cleverly  imitated.  Southern  red  gum  and  even 
California  redwood,  the  wood  of  the  world's  largest 
trees,  masquerade  as  mahogany,  while  in  the  cheap- 
est furniture  ordinary  birch  pretends  to  South 
African  origin. 


SUCH  STUFF  AS  HOUSES  ARE  MADE  OF  7 

So  much  for  outward  effect.  Woods  may  indeed 
be  "doctored  up"  to  deceive  the  unpractised  eye,  but 
usually  time  will  tell.  The  ear,  however,  is  seldom 
fooled,  and  for  some  of  our  most  common  musical 
instruments  we  depend  upon  the  reverberant  qualit\i 
of  certain  species  of  wood.  Spruce  in  particular 
possesses  a  high  degree  of  resonance,  its  long  and 
regular  fibres  being  capable  of  vibrating  like  so 
many  taut  strings.  Clean  spruce  lumber  is  there- 
fore much  in  demand  for  the  sounding  boards  of 
pianos  and  for  organ  pipes.  The  xylophone,  so 
recently  popular  in  vaudeville  and  dance  music,  is 
entirely  dependent  for  its  sound  upon  the  vibrations 
of  wood,  and  in  fact  the  word,  coming  from  the 
Greek,  means  "wood  sound." 

The  uses  of  wood  in  the  home  are  legion: 
picture  frames,  ornaments,  carpet  sweepers,  broom 
handles,  cedar  chests,  curtain  rollers,  shoe-trees, 
clothes-trees,  coat  hangers,  drain  boards,  bread 
boards,  ironing  boards,  clothes  pins,  clothes  dryers, 
buckets,  chopping  bowls,  knife  handles,  refriger- 
ators, candle-sticks,  lamps,  clocks,  and  backs  for 
toilet  articles  form  only  a  partial  list.  The  forest 
is  the  source.  Our  obligation  to  cooperate  in  its 
maintenance  is  commensurate  with  the  debt  that 
we  owe. 


CHAPTER  II 

Three  Thousand  a  Mile 

The  use  of  wood  in  maintaining  railroad  transpor- 
tation ;  wood  cross-ties. 

We  Americans  are  great  home-lovers,  but  we  are 
also  inveterate  travelers,  and  there  is  hardly  a  man 
or  a  woman  in  the  country  today  who  has  not  made 
at  least  a  short  journey  by  rail.  Did  you  ever  stop 
to  consider  that  under  nearly  every  mile  of  railroad 
track  lie  more  than  three  thousand  wood  cross-ties? 
Perhaps  you  have  often  seen  the  section  gangs 
ceaselessly  pulling  out  the  worn  and  weakened 
sleepers  to  replace  them  with  new  wood,  the  piles 
of  fresh  ties  and  the  burning  heaps  of  discarded 
timbers.  The  railroads  of  the  United  States  use 
about  125  million  new  wood  cross-ties  annually. 
When  you  realize  that  these  ties  would  be  sufficient 
to  build  forty  thousand  miles  of  road  or  carry  a 
track  nearly  five  times  around  the  world  at  the 
equator,  you  get  some  conception  of  the  drain  on 
our  forests  necessary  to  maintain  transportation. 

The  choice  of  wood  for  use  as  railroad  ties  de- 
8 


THREE  THOUSAND  A  MILE 


pends  upon  several  well  defined  conditions:  first, 
ability  to  resist  ordinary  decay;  second,  resistance 
to  the  crushing  force  of  heavy  rails  and  equipment; 
third,  proper  density  to  prevent  the  loosening  and 
pulling  of  spikes;  and  lastly,  a  sufficient  supply  to 
avoid  exorbitant  cost.     Once  upon  a  time  oak  filled 


J 


The  125  million  new  ties  required  by  the  railroads  of  the  United  States 

every  year  would  be  sufficient  to  carry  a  track  five  times  around  the 

world  at  the  equator. 

every  requirement,  but  today  our  oak  forests  have 
been  so  depleted  that  the  railroads  find  difliculty  in 
competing  with  woodwork  manufacturers,  furniture 
makers  and  countless  other  industries.     This  condi- 


10  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

tion  has  taught  railroad  men  how  to  get  almost  as 
good  service  out  of  cheaper  wood  properly  treated 
and  preserved,  and  accordingly  southern  pine  now 
plays  an  important  part,  while  Douglas  fir  and  a 
dozen  or  more  other  species  are  used  to  suit  various 
localities  and  conditions.  The  process  of  treating 
ties  has  been  very  widely  standardized,  the  method 
employed  being  to  place  the  prepared  and  seasoned 
wood  in  huge  cylinders  and  there  subject  it  at  high 
pressure  to  creosote  or  some  other  preserving  solu- 
tion. Such  treating  cylinders  now  form  part  of  the 
equipment  of  every  important  railway  system,  and 
creosoted  ties  may  be  seen  under  almost  any  track. 
Someone  has  said  that  the  greatest  railroad  tie 
expert  is  the  hobo.  He  gradually  learns  to  accom- 
modate his  stride  to  that  peculiar  length  necessary 
for  smooth  progress  along  the  right  of  way,  and,  if 
he  cannot  tell  the  difference  between  oak  and  chest- 
nut, his  weary  feet  can  at  least  attest  to  a  variation 
of  surface.  He  thus  stumbles  literally  upon  the 
cause  of  a  long  standing  controversy.  If  you  care- 
fully observe  the  ties  under  almost  any  important 
piece  of  track  you  notice  that,  while  many  of  them 
may  show  a  smooth  flat  surface,  the  majority  bear 
the  marks  of  having  been  hewn  or  flattened  very 
Irregularly.  The  former  have  been  sawn  by 
machinery,  the  latter  have  been  hewn  out  by  hand 


THREE  THOUSAND  A  MILE  11 

in  the  woods.  The  hewing  of  ties  is  all  individual 
work,  one  man  being  capable  of  making  from  fifteen 
to  thirty-five  ties  a  day.  Very  large  trees  cannot  be 
economically  handled  in  this  way,  those  from  ten  to 
seventeen  inches  in  diameter  being  preferable,  but 
even  then  from  twenty-five  to  seventy-five  per  cent, 
of  the  wood  is  lost  in  chips  and  split  pieces.  It  is  less 
wasteful  to  cut  ties  in  a  sawmill  in  the  same  manner 
as  that  in  which  other  large  timbers  are  manufac- 
tured, and  indeed  many  railroads  are  beginning  to 
appreciate  the  advantages  thus  gained.  Sawed  ties 
will  also  pile  better,  are  less  prodigal  of  preserva- 
tive material,  and  offer  a  more  uniform  bearing  for 
rails  and  tie  plates.  The  advocates  of  hewn  ties, 
however,  claim  that  the  conformity  to  the  grain  of 
the  wood  obtained  by  hewing  renders  this  type  of 
tie  both  stronger  and  more  resistive  to  decay,  and 
up  to  the  present  time  the  hewers  appear  to  have 
had  the  best  of  the  argument. 

The  price  of  all  wood  ties  has  increased  so 
rapidly  within  the  last  few  years  that  the  railroads 
have  been  searching  for  a  more  economical  substi- 
tute. In  Germany  cross-ties  made  of  concrete  and 
steel  have  proved  extremely  effective  and  given  con- 
siderably longer  service  than  wood.  Our  engineers, 
however,  have  found  that  while  concrete  and  steel 
ties    last    very   well    under    the    lighter    trains    of 


12 


OUR  VANISHING    FORESTS 


Europe — under  the  little  "goods  wagons"  with  their 
forty  men  or  eight  horse  capacity — they  lack  the 
resiliency  necessary  to  stand  up  under  our  larger 
and  heavier  steel  equipment.  Wood  still  remains  as 
the  only  material  able  to  endure  the  fearful  Ameri- 
can wear  and  tear.     Perhaps  some  day  the  whole 


The  rate  of  consumption  by  our   railroads   attains   the  figure  of  four 
ties  every  second. 

problem  will  be  solved  through  aerial  transporta- 
tion, but  that  time  has  not  yet  come.  We  still 
depend  upon  the  railroads  and  the  railroads  still 
depend  upon  the  forests. 

Something  will  have  to  be  done  to  maintain  the 


THREE  THOUSAND  A  MILE  13 

necessary  wood  supply.  In  the  past  more  emphasis 
has  been  laid  upon  the  cost  of  cutting  ties  than  upon 
growing  them.  This  attitude  will  have  to  be 
changed.  It  takes  an  oak  tree  at  least  sixty  years 
to  attain  sufficient  size  to  make  four  or  five  stand- 
ard ties,  while  many  of  the  trees  now  used  are  well 
over  a  century  old.  It  may  be  readily  estimated 
that  the  present  rate  of  consumption  by  our  rail- 
roads attains  the  figure  of  four  ties  per  second,  or 
in  other  words  these  roads  consume  in  one  second 
what  it  has  taken  almost  a  century  to  produce.  To 
grow  oak  trees  for  railroad  ties,  therefore,  is  not  a 
proposition  that  will  prove  of  general  interest. 
Pine  and  fir  trees,  however,  will  reach  a  size  suitable 
for  tie  manufacture  in  twenty  to  fifty  years. 

To  plant  a  crop  of  trees  and  harvest  them  at 
maturity  represents  in  this  country  a  practically  new 
field,  but  those  who  are  sufficiently  far-sighted  to 
see  beyond  the  next  generation  regard  it  as  the  only 
means  of  maintaining  the  supply  of  wood  absolutely 
necessary  to  railroad  transportation.  Some  years 
ago  the  Pennsylvania  system  carried  on  extensive 
tree  planting  along  its  right  of  way,  but  unfor- 
tunately for  the  advancement  of  the  idea  the  wrong 
species  were  used  and  the  results  were  for  the  most 
part  unsatisfactory.  Let  us  assume  that  a  pine  tree 
capable  of  producing  five  ties  could  be  grown  in 


14  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

forty  years,  and  then  let  us  apply  ordinary  arith- 
metic. A  crop  of  125  million  ties  would  require  25 
million  trees;  that  is  to  say,  altogether  about  900 
square  miles  of  forest.  A  permanent  crop  of  125 
million  ties  every  year  would  require  36  thousand 
square  miles  of  carefully  protected  woodland,  one- 
fortieth  of  which  would  be  cut  annually  and  imme- 
diately replanted.  This  is  an  area  as  large  as  the 
whole  state  of  Indiana,  but  equivalent  to  less  than 
one-tenth  of  the  existing  forest  area  of  the  United 
States. 

Some  such  plan  must  unquestionably  be  adopted. 
As  the  available  sources  of  wood  are  depleted,  there 
is  no  doubt  that  tree  planting  on  a  commercial  scale 
will  become  general.  Public  interest  must  steadily 
increase,  and  a  timely  consideration  of  the  whole 
wood  problem  by  government  and  state  authorities 
will  do  much  towards  its  solution, 


CHAPTER  III 

Pole  to  Pole  and  Pillar  to  Post 

How  wood  helps  us  to  maintain  communication; 
telegraph  and  telephone  poles;  piles  for  piers  and 
docks;  wood  as  essential  to  the  mining  of  coal  and 
other  products;   wood   fence-posts. 

Today  when  the  President  of  the  United  States 
makes  a  speech  in  Washington  he  is  heard  by  audi- 
ences in  New  York,  Chicago,  and  San  Francisco. 
Thousands  of  miles  of  wire  carry  his  words  from 
Atlantic  to  Pacific,  thousands  of  wood  poles  carry 
the  wires.  The  wireless  telephone  too  is  finding  its 
place  in  the  broadcasting  of  public  utterances;  but 
there  will  have  to  be  many  improvements  in  radio 
operation  before  the  poles  come  down. 

And  here  we  are  once  more  dependent  upon  our 
forests.  As  each  telegraph  or  telephone  pole 
usually  represents  a  single  tree,  no  less  than  five^ 
million  trees  have  to  be  cut  each  year  to  maintain 
the  carrying  of  man's  hasty  messages.  We  have 
been  particularly  fortunate  in  America  in  possessing 
great  forest  resources  of  cedar,  a  wood  slow  to 
decay  and  yet  reasonably  strong.     We  have  had 

15 


16  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

chestnut,  oak  and  cypress,  all  particularly  suitable 
for  use  as  poles;  yet,  because  we  have  considered 
the  forests  inexhaustible  and  have  made  no  effort 
to  see  that  a  new  tree  should  grow  beside  the  dis- 
mantled stump,  those  species  are  rapidly  vanishing. 


Only    when  radio  entirely  displaces  the  ordinary  telephone  will  wood 
poles  be  no  longer  needed. 

Today  thousands  of  cedar  poles  are  brought  from 
Idaho  to  supplement  the  diminishing  eastern  supply, 
but  how  long  will  the  Idaho  forests  last?  Will  they 
not  soon  go  the  way  of  all  the  rest? 

Fortunately  the  commercial  use  of  wood  preserv- 


POLE  TO  POLE  AND  PILLAR  TO  POST   17 

atives  is  coming  to  the  rescue.  Once  pine  poles 
were  considered  useless;  they  would  rot  away  inside 
of  five  years,  but  today  the  butt  is  impregnated  with 
creosote  and  the  pole  is  then  found  to  give  twice  the 
original  length  of  service.  It  is  now  estimated  that 
one  pole  in  every  six  is  made  of  creosoted  pine,  fir 
or  spruce.  There  is  no  reason  why  these  compara- 
tively rapid  growing  species  could  not  be  re-estab- 
lished in  the  eastern  and  central  states  from  which 
they  have  practically  disappeared,  why  they  could 
not  be  planted  in  even  the  smallest  wood-lots,  and 
why  they  could  not  be  sold  at  maturity  with  con- 
siderable profit  to  the  grower. 

Wood  poles  are  not  used  solely  for  carrying 
wires.  How  could  we  maintain  river  ferries  or  any 
form  of  steamship  transportation  without  wood  for 
piers,  docks  and  piles?  For  ferry-boat  slips  nothing 
has  ever  been  discovered  to  take  the  place  of  wood, 
its  resiliency  being  necessary  not  only  for  preserving 
its  own  life  but  that  of  the  vessels  constantly  crash- 
ing and  chafing  against  the  piles.  Concrete  and  steel 
docks  for  large  ships  have  been  successfully  built 
and  operated  in  many  places,  just  as  steel  frames 
set  in  concrete  have  been  used  as  substitutes  for 
wooden  poles  in  high  power  transmission,  but  the 
original  cost  is  considerably  greater  than  that  of 
wood  construction.     Think  of  the  old  wood  pier  on 


18 


OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 


which  you  used  to  sit  and  fish;  think  of  the  board- 
walks at  our  seaside  resorts;  think  of  the  wooden 
railway  trestles  whose  comparative  cheapness  ena- 
bles you  to  travel  across  great  expanses  of  water  at 
a  fare  no  higher  than  if  the  road-bed  were  dry  land. 
Then  thank  the  forest. 


Modern  methods  have   made   it   possible   for   the  ordinary  farmer  to 

treat  his  fence  posts  with  a  scientific  preservative  and  thereby  obtain 

from  them  a  maximum  of  service. 

While  cedar  does  very  well  as  a  pole  intended 
only  for  carrying  wires,  it  splits  rather  too  readily 
under  impact  to  give  good  service  for  dock  piles  and 
heavy  trestles.  Oak  is  most  desirable,  but  creosoted 
pine  and  fir  give  service  quite  as  satisfactory  as  do 


POLE  TO  POLE  AND  PILLAR  TO  POST      19 

the  naturally  more  durable  woods.  The  creosote 
incidentally  performs  another  valuable  service  in 
that  it  protects  the  submerged  portions  from  the  at- 
tacks of  nearly  all  salt  water  borers  and  worms. 

Once  upon  a  time  an  acquaintance  with  the  art  of 
splitting  fence  rails  formed  a  part  of  every  man's 
education.  The  old-fashioned  rail  has  indeed 
passed,  but  not  the  wood  fence  post,  and  we  still  use 
-no  less  than  five  hundred  million  a  year.  Fences 
today  have  a  new  use,  not  to  keep  the  cattle  in  but 
to  keep  them  out.  A  railroad  train  at  sixty  miles 
an  hour  can  no  longer  stop  to  argue  right  of  way 
with  a  stray  cow,  nor  is  it  only  a  matter  of  paying 
damages  in  the  amount  of  three  times  the  value  of 
the  beast.  The  danger  to  the  train  itself  is  far  more 
serious,  and  the  railroads  for  their  own  protection 
have  become  the  largest  users  of  fencing  materials. 
Fence  posts  come  from  all  sections  of  the  country 
and  from  nearly  every  species  of  tree.  As  the  oc- 
casion may  demand  they  are  hewn,  split  or  sawn 
from  small  trunks,  or,  in  the  neighborhood  of  large 
logging  operations  in  the  west,  from  tree  tops  and 
heavy  branches  left  by  the  lumbermen.  The 
swampy  regions  of  the  south  are  rich  in  suitable 
woods. 

Here    again    preservative    treatment    forms    the 
backbone  of  durability.     Even  before  the  develop- 


20 


OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 


ment  of  modern  creosoting  methods  it  was  often 
customary  to  dip  the  butt  end  of  the  post  into  crude 
oil  and  then  set  fire  to  it,  the  consequent  charring  of 
the  wood  furnishing  a  protective  coat.  Today, 
however,  the  fence  post  maker  sets  up  a  couple  of 
creosote  barrels  connected  by  an  iron  pipe  leading 


Without  wood    many  of  our   important   mining   industries  would    be 
forced  to  shut  down. 

over  a  fire.  He  thrusts  the  posts  vertically  into  the 
liquid,  heats  it,  and  then  by  allowing  it  to  cool  ob- 
tains the  most  thorough  permeation.  The  ordinary 
farmer  may  in  this  way  treat  his  own  product  at  a 
cost  of  about  ten  cents  per  post,  and  at  the  same 
time  he  may  be  sure  that  his  posts  will  give  a  maxi- 


POLE  TO  POLE  AND  PILLAR  TO  POST      21 

mum  service.  Generally  speaking,  the  life  of  a 
creosoted  post  is  about  twelve  to  sixteen  years,  or 
twice  that  of  one  in  the  natural  state. 

Without  wood  tunnel  props,  shaft  lining  and  ties 
for  narrow  gauge  railroads  the  production  of  soft 
coal  in  this  country  would  stop  tomorrow.  Our 
greatest  remaining  and  hitherto  undeveloped  re- 
sources of  iron  ore  can  be  successfully  tapped  only 
with  the  aid  of  wood,  while  many  of  our  precious 
metals  are  found  in  strata  so  soft  that  thousands  of 
wood  supports  can  alone  prevent  a  cave-in.  Wood 
props  are  also  used  to  a  varying  extent  in  anthracite 
coal  mines,  salt  mines,  lime  quarries,  and  in  every 
industry  where  tunneling  is  necessary.  Indeed,  for 
these  purposes  more  than  200,000,000  cubic  feet  of 
wood  are  consumed  every  year. 

The  utilization  of  wood  for  the  purposes  enumer- 
ated in  this  chapter  bears  a  very  interesting  relation 
to  the  solution  of  the  whole  wood  supply  problem. 
The  public  is  now  beginning  to  regard  trees  as  an 
agricultural  crop  which  must  be  planted  and  pro- 
tected in  the  same  way  as  any  other,  but  there  nat- 
urally exists  considerable  hesitancy  in  planting  a 
crop  which  requires  a  lifetime  to  mature.  Poles, 
fence  posts,  mine  props  and  the  like,  however,  may 
be  cut  from  young  trees  fifteen  to  thirty  years  of 
age.     They  are  rightly  products  of  the  local  wood- 


22  OUR  VANISHING    FORESTS 

lot  and  as  such  they  represent  an  early  or  advance 
yield  which  helps  to  return  the  investment  cost  and 
make  it  financially  possible  for  the  wood  grower  to 
await  the  development  of  the  rest  of  his  plantation. 
Government  commissions  and  forestry  associations 
are  beginning  to  realize  that  the  emphasizing  of 
the  short-time  forest  crop  is  essential  to  the  accom- 
plishment of  their  aim.  It  is  the  keynote  to  the 
successful  growing  of  a  forest  near  the  ultimate 
market  for  its  various  products,  and  as  such  the 
foundation  stone  for  a  new  low  cost  of  living. 


CHAPTER  IV 

Little  Wooden  Toothpicks  to  Big  Lumber 
Wagons 

Various  diversified  and  interesting  uses  of  wood; 
boxes  and  barrels,  and  their  manufacture;  pencils; 
scientific  instruments;  toys;  paving  blocks;  sawdust; 
excelsior,  etc. 

Some  time  ago  in  an  Ohio  town  there  appeared 
across  the  entire  front  of  a  lumber  dealer's  estab- 
lishment this  legend:  "Everything  from  little 
wooden  toothpicks  to  big  lumber  wagons."  There 
is  no  doubt  that  the  advertising  power  of  the  slogan 
caught  the  public  eye,  for  it  remained  blazoned 
along  the  main  street  of  the  village  for  several 
years.  If,  however,  this  one  dealer  really  pretended 
to  keep  even  a  sample  of  every  wood  product,  his 
yards  would  have  extended  over  half  the  town. 

Among  the  more  important  articles  made  from 
wood  are  packing  boxes  and  crates.  In  fact,  some 
fourteen  to  twenty  per  cent  of  our  total  annual  lum- 
ber-cut is  thus  applied.  To  be  suitable  for  box 
making,  wood  must  be  soft  and  yet  reasonably 
23 


24 


OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 


strong,  so  that  white  pine  held  for  many  years  the 
place  of  prominence,  but  as  this  wood  became  scarce 
and  expensive,  yellow  pine  from  North  Carolina 
and  other  southern  states  gradually  took  its  place. 
A  recent  development  in  this  industry  is  the  making 
of  box-board  from  wood  pulp.  The  canners  of 
fruit  and  vegetables  use  great  quantities  of  all  kinds 


Barrels  are  generally  manufactured  piece-meal,  one  plant  making  the 
staves,  another  the  heads,  and  a  third  the  hoops. 

of  boxes  for  shipping  their  product.  Fresh-fruit 
growers  are  the  next  largest  users,  the  orange  and 
lemon  producers  of  California  alone  shipping  no 
less  than  20  million  boxes  of  fruit  every  season. 
Most  of  the  prepared  box  and  box-shook  manufac- 
turers are  located  near  the  canneries  and  larger  cen- 
ters of  population  in  the  east. 


TOOTHPICKS  TO  LUMBER  WAGONS      25 

It  Is  impossible  to  discuss  this  subject  without 
also  taking  into  consideration  the  many  thousands 
of  hard  and  soft-wood  barrels  produced  by  the 
cooperage  plants  of  the  country.  Cooperage — bar- 
rels, buckets  and  other  containers  of  that  general 
construction — is  of  two  main  classes,  slack  cooper- 
age which  is  intended  only  for  solids,  and  tight 
cooperage  which  is  capable  of  holding  liquids.  Both 
are  interesting,  not  only  because  of  the  importance 
of  the  industry  as  a  consumer  of  250  million  cubic 
feet  of  wood  a  year,  but  also  because  of  the  mechan- 
ical perfection  of  the  process.  Barrels  are  generally 
manufactured  piece-meal — one  plant  making  the 
staves,  another  the  heads,  and  a  third  the  hoops, 
each  in  widely  separated  regions,  although,  to  be 
sure,  the  ownership  may  be  the  same.  In  the  north 
our  old  friends  beech,  birch  and  maple  are  chiefly 
used  for  the  best  flour  and  sugar  barrel  staves,  with 
perhaps  pine  for  the  heads  and  nearly  always  elm 
for  the  hoops.  In  the  south  staves  are  commonly 
made  of  red  gum,  this  affording  a  very  satisfactory 
barrel  for  molasses,  rosin  and  the  like.  A  barrel 
stave  has  no  single  flat  surface.  To  produce  it, 
special  cylinder-shaped  saws  are  sometimes  used, 
but  more  often  the  shaping  is  done  with  a  mechan- 
ical shearing  knife  after  the  wood  has  previously 
been  steamed  and  softened.     The  hoops  for  slack 


26  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

cooperage  are  either  sawn  or  cut  from  green  elm 
wood  and  appear  as  perfectly  straight  strips  until 
boiled  and  placed  in  a  coiling  machine.  Each  of 
these  component  parts,  having  been  manufactured 
in  small  or  portable  plants  near  the  supply  of  the 
proper  kind  of  wood,  is  then  shipped  to  an  assem- 


The  various  steps  in  pencil  making. 

bly  plant  near  the  point  where  the  barrels  will  be 
used. 

The  manufacture  of  tight  cooperage  consumes 
about  fifteen  per  cent,  of  all  the  white  oak  cut  in 
the  country.  Although  hardwood  staves  are  sawed 
rather  than  sheared  to  the  proper  form,  the  opera- 
tion is  very  wasteful,  about  sixty  per  cent,  of  the 
material  being  lost  in  the  shaping  and  close  fitting 
necessary.     In  order  to  obtain  greater  strength  flat 


TOOTHPICKS  TO  LUMBER  WAGONS      27 

metal  bands  are  here  preferable  to  wood  hoops. 
Because  of  the  ever-increasing  cost  of  tight  barrels 
produced  by  the  old  methods,  various  experiments 
have  been  conducted  with  a  wood-pulp  or  paper 
barrel,  generally  made  in  the  form  of  layers  of  stiff 
paper  held  together  by  some  suitable  adhesive. 
Such  a  container  may  be  both  water-tight  and 
weather  proof.  The  inventors  claim  that  due  to 
elimination  of  the  wastage  above  mentioned,  a 
paper  barrel  can  be  produced  at  about  one-third  the 
cost  of  a  regular  wooden  barrel,  but  as  yet  no  large 
scale  manufacture  has  been  attempted. 

It  was  at  one  time  thought  that  the  enactment  of 
prohibition  laws  would  have  a  very  serious  effect 
upon  the  tight  cooperage  business,  as  whiskey  and 
wine  barrels  represented  the  highest  grade  product. 
As  it  happens,  however,  there  has  been  an  increase 
rather  than  a  falling  off  in  the  industry;  first,  be- 
cause of  the  many  new  discoveries  of  oil  with 
increasing  demand  for  barrel  shipments,  and  sec- 
ondly, because  of  the  development  of  an  export 
trade.  Nearly  twenty-five  per  cent,  of  our  high 
grade  barrel  production  is  now  purchased  by  the 
wine  growers  of  France. 

We  do  not  have  to  go  to  a  lumber  yard  to  buy 
wood.  We  buy  it  in  furniture  stores  and  grocery 
stores,   drug   stores,   book   stores,    and   stationers. 


28  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

Take  lead  pencils  for  instance.  They  are  made  in 
the  United  States  at  the  rate  of  over  a  billion  a  year 
and  require  such  an  amount  of  wood  that  eastern 
red  cedar  and  juniper  have  already  become  scarce 


From  the  use  of  wood  we  obtain  pleasure  in  many  ways. 

and  a  hunt  is  on  for  other  suitable  species.  Pencil 
manufacture  is  a  fastidious  operation  using  only  the 
finest  heart-wood  of  the  evergreen  cedar.  It  seems 
a  curious  waste.  The  writing  qualities  of  a  pencil 
are  in  no  way  improved  by  the  character  of  the 


TOOTHPICKS  TO  LUMBER  WAGONS      29 

wood  used,  yet  the  trade  demands  not  only  good 
color  and  soft  texture,  but  even  the  presence  of  a 
delicate  cedar  odor.  For  many  years  it  was  cus- 
tomary to  allow  the  sap-wood  to  rot  under  damp 
conditions  until  it  fell  away,  and  to  cut  into  pencil 
slats  only  the  remaining  heart.  Now,  however,  this 
light  colored  sap-wood  is  made  into  pen-holders 
and  similar  articles.  So-called  paper  pencils  were 
once  more  popular  than  they  are  today.  Their 
manufacturers  thought  that  a  pencil  which  would 
not  require  a  knife  to  sharpen  it  would  be  a  great 
step  in  advance,  but  the  whittling  public  apparently 
decided  otherwise. 

To  make  a  wooden  pencil  the  manufacturer  first 
cuts  out  a  board  or  slat  about  seven  inches  long,  the 
width  of  half  a  dozen  pencils  and  as  thick  as  one- 
half  a  pencil  diameter.  With  a  special  machine  he 
then  shapes  it  into  six  semi-rounded  or  semi- 
hexagonal  sections  and  grooves  one  side  ready  for 
the  "lead."  The  "lead"  is  inserted,  the  halves 
glued  together  and  the  pencil  finished  at  some  more 
convenient  point.  All  our  high  grade  pencils  are 
filled  with  graphite  which  is  not  really  lead,  or  even 
a  metal,  but,  similar  to  coal,  a  product  derived  from 
decayed  wood  or  vegetable  matter.  The  best 
graphite  comes  largely  from  mines  in  Africa. 

In  the  same  class  with  pencils  we  may  consider 


30  OUR  VANISHING    FORESTS 

all  sorts  of  miscellaneous  articles  such  as  rulers, 
squares,  spirit  levels,  thermometer  backs,  cameras, 
tripods,  and  various  drafting  instruments.  In  the 
manufacture  of  large  cameras  nothing  has  been 
found  to  equal  the  lightness  and  workability  of 
wood.  Each  scientific  instrument,  however,  requires 
different  and  special  characteristics.  The  wooden 
back  of  a  thermometer,  for  example,  must  be  made 
from  a  wood  that  will  not  shrink  or  warp  in  such 
a  way  as  to  result  in  the  breaking  of  the  glass  tube, 
while  a  carpenter's  level  must  be  hard  and  not  easily 
sprung  out  of  shape.  For  these  uses  black  walnut 
and  cherry  respectively  are  the  favorites. 

Through  the  use  of  wood  we  obtain  pleasure  in 
many  ways.  The  manufacture  of  musical  instru- 
ments mentioned  in  another  chapter  is  one  example, 
but  we  should  not  forget  the  children's  toys,  or  the 
part  played  by  wood  in  our  games  and  sports. 
From  basswood,  beech,  birch,  maple  and  pine  are 
made  the  blocks  that  delight  our  earliest  days,  fit- 
together  toys  and  tool  chests  for  boys,  toy  furniture 
and  dolls'  houses  for  girls,  and  all  sorts  of  toy 
animals  from  rocking  horses  to  the  fearfully  and 
wonderfully  shaped  birds  and  animals  that  amuse 
even  the  grown-ups.  Where  would  we  be  without 
baseball  bats  and  golf  clubs,  tennis  racquets  and 
hockey  sticks ;  without  skis  and  snow  shoes,  bowling 


TOOTHPICKS  TO  LUMBER  WAGONS      31 

alleys  and  billiard  cues?  Then  there  are  rifles  and 
fishing  rods  too,  wooden  decoys  and  patent  fish 
baits.  The  woods  used  for  these  purposes  range 
from  good  hickory  for  golf  club  shafts  and  dog- 
wood or  persimmon  for  the  heads,  to  ornamental 


The   common   match   and   the   safety    match.     The   first  is  made   in 

America  where  we  have  had  wood  in  abundance;  the  second  is  made  in 

Europe  where  wood  must  be  conserved. 

ebony  and  mahogany;  from  ash  and  willow  for 
baseball  bats  to  the  wood  of  the  Christmas  holly 
tree.  We  thus  consume  some  twenty-five  million 
board  feet  annually. 

Matches  and  toothpicks  seem  like  little  things 
which  would  not  require  the  use  of  much  wood.  It 
is  natural  to  suppose  that  they  could  best  be  made 
from  sawmill  waste,  but  this  is  not  the  case. 
Because  soft,  absolutely  clean  material  is  necessary. 


32  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

match  manufacture  is  a  distinct  industry,  obtaining 
most  of  its  raw  material  direct  from  the  forests, 
and  consuming  many  thousand  cords  every  year. 
The  wood  must  not  only  be  carefully  seasoned  and 
dried  but  one  to  which  the  inflammable  head  mate- 
rial will  cling.  A  very  ingenious  mechanism  Is 
required  to  cut  the  wood  first  Into  blocks,  then  Into 
strips  and  to  dip  the  ends.  Our  large  common 
matches  are  a  distinctive  product  of  America.  The 
writer  well  remembers  producing  one  from  a  private 
supply  while  traveling  through  England,  and  the 
laughing  comment  of  a  forester  who  remarked  "No 
wonder  you  are  using  up  your  wood  in  America. 
Is  that  a  match  or  a  fence-post?"  European  coun- 
tries use  chiefly  the  small  safety-matches  made  from 
thin  sheets  of  veneer,  such  as  spruce,  basswood  and 
aspen.  These  being  square  rather  than  round  like 
our  common  matches  entail  less  waste  in  manufac- 
ture. Very  thin  spruce  veneer  is  also  employed  In 
the  manufacture  of  safety-match  boxes.  While  we 
produce  safety-matches  to  some  extent  in  the  United 
States,  we  import  some  seven  hundred  million  boxes 
annually. 

Wood  paving  blocks  are  another  specialized 
product.  Until  recently  their  use  has  been  confined 
chiefly  to  city  street  paving,  the  smooth  hard  surface 
obtained  being  similar  to  asphalt  but  less  slippery 


TOOTHPICKS  TO  LUMBER  WAGONS      S3 

and  less  noisy.  Wood  blocks  for  this  purpose,  being 
generally  treated  with  preservative,  have  a  long  life 
and  permit  a  correspondingly  low  cost  of  road 
upkeep.  A  more  recent  development  offers  wood 
blocks  for  factory  and  other  inside  floors  where  a 
maximum  of  wear  is  demanded.  Like  street  paving 
blocks  these  are  generally  cut  so  as  to  offer  the  end 
of  the  grain  at  the  surface,  thus  avoiding  chips  and 
splinters,  and  are  grooved  to  permit  the  cementing 
fluid  to  secure  a  better  hold.  Wood  block  floors  are 
becoming  popular  in  plants  where  heavy  car  loads 
of  material  are  constantly  pushed  to  and  fro. 

Even  sawdust  plays  an  important  part  in  our 
daily  life.  It  furnishes  the  chief  fuel  for  most  of 
our  sawmills,  it  is  used  for  packing  and  storing  ice, 
for  the  protection  of  breakable  articles  during 
transportation,  for  the  covering  and  cleaning  of 
floors,  and  in  the  manufacture  of  linoleum.  Fine 
cedar  sawdust  is  also  utilized  for  polishing  jewelry. 
In  spite  of  our  great  lumber  industry,  and  the  vast 
quantities  of  sawdust  produced  and  wasted,  large 
consignments  have  occasionally  entered  our  eastern 
ports  from  the  Scandinavian  countries.  With 
reasonable  freight  rates,  sawdust  can  be  shipped 
across  the  ocean  more  cheaply  than  it  can  be 
brought  to  the  Atlantic  Coast  from  our  great  mill- 
ing centers  in  the  west,  or  collected  from  hundreds 


34  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

of  little  mills  scattered  about  nearer  at  hand.  The 
utilization  of  by-products  in  Norway  and  Sweden  is 
carried  to  a  fine  point,  a  large  pile  of  sawdust  being 
there  considered  worth  several  thousand  dollars. 
An  American  lumber  manufacturer  in  Louisiana  or 
Oregon,  however,  would  regard  such  an  accumula- 
tion as  a  liability  rather  than  as  an  asset  and  might 
even  be  willing  to  pay  good  money  to  dispose  of  it. 
A  similar  product  of  special  importance  is  excel- 
sior, which,  although  merely  thin  curled  shavings  or 
shreds  of  wood,  is  no  such  plebeian  material  as  one 
might  at  first  suppose.  Basswood  is  the  aristocrat 
of  the  excelsior  trade,  but,  because  of  its  limited 
quantity,  it  furnishes  only  a  comparatively  small 
proportion  of  the  supply.  None  of  the  better 
grades  can  be  manufactured  from  gummy  pines  or 
from  any  wood  with  either  a  disagreeable  odor  or 
too  brittle  characteristics.  Excelsior  is  best  known 
as  a  packing  material  capable  of  protecting  even  the 
most  delicate  glass,  but  it  fills  a  variety  of  needs 
from  stuffing  for  mattresses  and  cheap  automobile 
upholstery  to  the  making  of  a  kind  of  twisted  rope 
used  in  the  cast  iron  pipe  industry.  A  very  high 
grade  of  finely  shaven  excelsior  known  as  "wood 
wool,"  can  be  used  even  for  filtering  purposes. 
This  refined  product  ranges  from  one-sixtieth  to  one 
five-hundredth  of  an  inch  in  thickness,  and  is  about 


TOOTHPICKS  TO  LUMBER  WAGONS      35 

one  sixty-fourth  of  an  inch  wide.  Experiments  have 
been  made  with  weaving  it  into  mats  and  floor  cov- 
erings, while  the  finest  grades  make  an  excellent 
absorbent  for  hospital  use. 


CHAPTER  V 

The  Throne  of  King  Coal 

The  fuel  question;   wood  versus  coal. 

Do  you  remember  the  story  of  the  poor  little 
rich  girl  who  had  money  and  jewels  to  burn? 
America  has  so  many  riches,  so  many  natural  re- 
sources that  one  actually  hinders  the  development 
of  another.  Europeans  tell  us,  for  example,  that 
our  very  abundance  of  coal  is  partly  responsible  for 
the  rapid  disappearance  of  our  forests.  Continental 
Europe  has  enough  coal  for  industrial  purposes 
only.  To  heat  their  homes  and  cook  their  food 
most  of  the  people  use  wood,  and  forest  conserva- 
tion, being  essential  to  the  supply  of  a  clearly  self- 
evident  necessity  of  life,  requires  no  explanation  and 
no  stimulus.  We  in  America  lack  this  direct  touch, 
and  our  whole  attitude  toward  the  forest  problem 
is  governed  accordingly. 

Some  years  ago  we  burned  a  great  deal  of  wood 

in  locomotives  and  river  steamers,  but  that  is  all 

past.     Green  hardwood  is  still  used,  however,   to 

remove  impurities  in  the  process  of  smelting  copper, 

36 


THE  THRONE  OF  KING  COAL  37 

and  to  a  limited  extent  in  brick,  tile,  salt  and  wool 
manufacture.  The  sawmills  utilize  a  very  large 
quantity  of  their  own  mill  waste  as  fuel,  but  chiefly 
because  in  many  cases  this  represents  the  most 
economical  method  of  disposal.  Small  quantities  of 
cord  wood  are  burned  in  the  fireplaces  of  cities, 
towns  and  rural  communities,  but  the  real  fuel-wood 
users  are  the  farmers  who  are  located  too  far  away 
from  the  coal  distributors  for  convenient  and  cheap 
delivery. 

What  the  future  will  show  in  regard  to  the  con- 
tinuance of  our  coal  supply  is  impossible  to  predict, 
but  it  is  doubtful  whether  coal  will  ever  have  to 
yield  its  place  of  prominence  to  wood.  The  creation 
of  great  central  power  distributing  units,  such  as 
has  been  suggested  for  the  entire  northeastern  sec- 
tion of  our  country,  will  mean  a  great  saving  in  the 
use  of  coal  for  industrial  purposes  and  free  large 
quantities  for  home  use.  Undoubtedly,  it  will  also 
mean  a  general  cheapening  of  electric  power  and 
extend  the  use  of  electricity  for  private  purposes. 
Developments  of  this  nature  will  permit  the  fur- 
nishing of  electric  light  and  heat  to  rural  communi- 
ties which  have  not  hitherto  enjoyed  it,  and  wood 
fuel  will  thus  be  driven  from  its  last  important 
stronghold. 

Why  do  we  buy  coal  in  preference  to  wood  for 


38  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

heating  and  cooking?  It  is  not  because  coal  itself  is 
less  expensive,  for  it  is  a  fact  that  the  amount  of 
heat  derived  from  one  ton  of  coal  costing  fourteen 
dollars  and  one  cord  of  hardwood  costing  ten  dol- 
lars is  about  equal.  No,  it  is  really  only  a  matter 
of  convenience.  Anyone  who,  during  a  coal  short- 
age, has  attempted  to  keep  his  furnace  going  with 
wood  will  testify  that  he  does  not  care  to  repeat  the 
experience.  Central  heating  and  constant  stoking 
necessary  to  maintain  a  wood  fire  do  not  go 
together.    Wood  is  too  bulky  and  burns  too  quickly. 

The  unit  of  fuel  wood  is  the  cord,  but  this  is  in 
reality  a  rather  indefinite  quantity.  It  represents  a 
pile  of  four  foot  lengths,  four  feet  high  and  eight 
feet  long,  or  128  cubic  feet,  but  there  are  usually 
so  many  rounded  surfaces  that  the  solid  content 
varies  widely.  A  crooked  stick  takes  up  more  room 
than  a  straight  stick,  a  few  large  projecting  knots 
will  cheat  you  out  of  a  dozen  billets.  Indeed,  the 
actual  content  of  such  a  pile  is  usually  estimated  at 
about  sixty  to  ninety  cubic  feet. 

In  this  country  fuel  wood  as  it  is  found  in  the 
forest  brings  a  small  price.  The  six  to  thirteen 
dollars  per  cord  paid  by  the  ultimate  consumer  in 
our  northeastern  states  is  at  least  fifty  to  seventy- 
five  per  cent,  labor  charge.  There  is  a  tremendous 
amount  of  hand  labor  involved  in  tree  felling,  saw- 


THE  THRONE  OF  KING  COAL 


39 


ing  and  splitting,  and  even  when  a  gasoline  saw  is 
used  to  take  the  place  of  laborious  bucking,  there 
are  many  wages  to  pay.  Add  to  this  the  cost  of 
hauling  and  trucking  to  the  wood  yard  and  finally 
to  the  city  man's  back  door,  and  you  will  appreciate 
the  reason  for  an  apparently  high  retail  charge.    In 


The  heat  derived  from  one  ton  of  coal  costing  $14.00  and  one  cord  of 

wood  costing  $10.00  is  about  equal,  but  the  cord  of  wood  will  weigh  two 

tons,  take  up  more  storage  space  and  require  constant  feeding  to  the 

fire. 

certain  southern  and  western  sections  of  our  coun- 
try, however,  sawmill  waste  can  be  delivered  at  the 
house  door  for  as  low  as  three  dollars  and  a  half 
per  cord,  and  at  this  price  the  lumbermen  are  only 
too  glad  to  get  rid  of  it.  Unfortunately,  the  gradual 
westward  movement  of  the  lumber  industry  has  cut 
most  of  us  off  from  the  enjoyment  of  such  benefits, 


40  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

and  It  is  a  sad  sight  for  the  visitor  from  the  east  to 
see  hundreds  upon  hundreds  of  cords  feeding  the 
mill  burners  simply  because  of  the  prohibitive  cost 
of  transportation.  Perhaps  it  may  be  of  some  com- 
fort to  know  that  in  many  European  countries, 
where  wood  is  almost  the  only  fuel,  the  pre-war 
price  was  equivalent  to  at  least  fifteen  or  twenty 
dollars  per  cord. 

The  person  who  burns  wood  at  home  often  wants 
to  know  what  kind  to  buy — what  kind  will  give  him 
the  best  return  in  heat  or  pleasant  companionship 
for  his  money.  It  is  a  hard  question  to  answer,  as 
some  love  the  snapping  cheerfulness  of  a  pine  blaze, 
while  others  prefer  the  slow  steady  heat  of  a  hard- 
wood fire.  The  choice  is  also  limited  by  the  kind 
of  wood  available  in  the  immediate  vicinity. 
Hickory  is  a  long  burner  and  an  excellent  heat  pro- 
ducer. Beech  is  a  general  all  round  favorite.  Oak, 
birch,  and  maple,  elm  and  cherry  are  also  good  fuel 
woods.  The  best  of  the  pines  is  the  Longleaf  of  the 
south;  southern  Shortleaf  pine,  hemlock,  Douglas 
fir,  gum,  sycamore  and  soft  maple  forming  a  some- 
what secondary  group.  Eastern  red  cedar  burns 
with  a  pleasant  odor,  but  produces  only  about  half 
the  heat  of  the  hardwoods.  Poplar,  Norway  and 
white  pine,  cypress,  basswood,  spruce  and  catalpa 
also  belong  in  the  inferior  class,  but  when  thor- 


THE  THRONE  OF  KING  COAL  41 

oughly  dried  are  not  undesirable.  If  firewood  is  in 
the  least  green  a  large  proportion  of  the  heat  is  used 
up  in  driving  out  the  moisture  and  the  result  is  so 
poor  that  it  is  generally  best  to  buy  the  season's 
supply  a  year  in  advance  and  stack  it  in  a  dry  place. 
Any  kind  of  wood  will  burn  when  dry,  but  some 
char  so  rapidly  that  they  tend  to  extinguish  their 
own  blaze.  This  last  is  particularly  true  of  Cali- 
fornia redwood,  and  the  consequent  low  fire  hazard 
has  been  urged  by  lumber  manufacturers  in  favor  of 
using  redwood  in  home  construction. 

The  point  to  be  remembered  is  that  fuel-wood  is 
not  rightly  a  forest  product  but  a  forest  by-product, 
and  a  large  portion  of  the  trees  now  used  for  fuel 
ought  to  be  grouped  into  units  for  producing  lum- 
ber, poles,  pulpwood,  etc.  Our  gradual  appreciation 
of  the  need  for  forest  growing  foreshadows  just 
such  a  development,  as  the  thinning  out  of  young 
and  injured  trees  under  proper  forest  practice, 
combined  with  the  ordinary  waste  from  wood-using 
industries,  would  furnish  fuel-wood  more  than  suf- 
ficient for  all  our  needs.  If  the  price  of  lumber  and 
other  wood  products  is  to  be  kept  at  a  minimum 
those  thinnings  and  waste  pieces  must  be  sold.  If 
we  abandon  the  use  of  wood  fuel  in  favor  of  coal 
and  electricity,  we  must  pay  just  so  much  more  for 
the  primary  wood  products,  or  in  other  words,  just 
so  much  tribute  to  "King  Coal." 


CHAPTER  VI 
The  Paper  Age 

The  uses  of  paper  and  wood  pulp;  newspapers 
and  advertising;  books,  writing  paper,  wrapping 
paper,    card-board,    paper-board,    papier    mache,    etc. 

We  are  today  living  in  a  veritable  age  of  paper. 
The  annual  value  of  all  our  paper  and  other 
similar  products  made  from  wood  pulp,  already  not 
less  than  eight  hundred  million  dollars,  is  constantly 
growing,  and  further  developments  are  limited  only 
by  the  supply  of  raw  material.  That  material  Is 
wood. 

Of  all  the  paper  that  we  see  in  various  forms, 
newspaper  naturally  assumes  the  greatest  impor- 
tance. There  are  twenty-five  hundred  different 
daily  papers  published  in  the  United  States,  besides 
some  fifteen  thousand  weeklies  and  similar  periodi- 
cals. The  daily  papers  alone  have  a  circulation  in 
excess  of  twenty-eight  million  copies;  in  fact,  over 
a  hundred  of  them  print  more  than  a  hundred 
thousand  copies  each  every  twenty-four  hours. 
Astronomers  tell  us  that  the  sun  is  something 
42 


THE  PAPER  AGE 


43 


like  ninety-two  million  miles  away,  a  distance 
so  great  that  an  airplane  flying  in  a  straight 
line  could  not  cover  it  in  a  hundred  years.  Yet 
the  various  paper-making  machines  of  the  country 
turn  out  every  year  an  amount  of  newsprint  equiv- 


Our  annual  production  of  newsprint  paper  is  equivalent  to  a  strip  as 
wide  as  the  ordinary  daily  and  half  the  distance  to  the  sun  in  length. 

alent  to  a  strip  as  wide  as  the  ordinary  daily 
paper  and  half  the  distance  to  the  sun  in  length. 
Look  at  a  Sunday  edition  with  its  hundred  and  fifty 
pages  of  news,  stories,  pictures,  and  advertisements. 
Many  of  us  cannot  help  thinking  what  a  waste  it  is. 
We  read  a  few  pages  and  put  the  rest  in  the  scrap- 
basket.    "I  could  get  along  without  half  of  my  daily 


44  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

paper  anyhow,"  we  say,  and  then  add  perhaps, 
"Look  at  those  pages  and  pages  of  advertisements." 
Very  true,  but  the  trouble  is  that  the  newspaper  and 
periodical  managers  could  not  give  us  the  reading 
matter  and  features  without  them.  It  is  an  estab- 
lished fact  that  the  sale  price  of  a  newspaper  barely 
covers  the  cost  of  the  raw  material  that  goes  into  it. 
Take  a  thirty  page  daily  paper  selling  for  three 
cents;  the  cost  of  approximately  one-quarter  pound 
of  newsprint  paper  which  it  contains  is  about  one 
cent,  and  the  ink  and  printing  expense  fully  make  up 
the  rest.  Take  a  weekly  publication  like  the  "Satur- 
day Evening  Post";  five  cents  would  not  pay  for 
that  much  blank  paper.  Where  do  the  editors, 
reporters,  printers  and  owners  come  in?  Why, 
through  the  advertising  profits.  For  a  double  page 
advertisement  in  a  single  issue  of  the  weekly  periodi- 
cal just  mentioned,  the  advertiser  pays  fourteen 
thousand  dollars.  If  he  finds  the  results  worth  the 
price,  it  cannot  be  altogether  a  waste.  No,  adver- 
tising is  a  legitimate  industry,  but  advertising  could 
not  be  carried  on  without  wood  pulp. 

Next  in  importance  to  newsprint  comes  book 
paper.  The  latter  is  a  much  higher  grade  product, 
requiring  a  special  chemically  made  pulp,  while  clay 
and  rosin  are  added  in  order  to  obtain  the  desired 
texture  and  weight.     The  presence  of  the  clay  ex- 


THE  PAPER  AGE 


45 


plains  why  a  page  taken  from  a  book  will  not  burn 
so  rapidly  as  a  newspaper. 

Then,  there  are  the  fine  writing  papers.  Many 
of  them  used  to  be  manufactured  almost  entirely 
from  linen  rags,  but  of  recent  years  the  cost  of  such 


Every  day  in  the  year  several  thousand  trees  find  their  way  into  our 
wastcbaskets. 


material  has  been  so  high  that  it  has  been  necessary 
to  introduce  in  all  the  cheaper  grades  a  very  large 
admixture  of  wood  pulp.  Tissue  papers  are  also 
made  from  rags  or  trimmings  of  high  grade  paper 
combined  with  varying  quantities  of  new  wood  pulp. 
Every  little  store  in  the  country  has  its  roll  of 


46  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

paper  for  wrapping  and  packing,  while  large  shops 
are  often  obliged  to  keep  a  special  warehouse  con- 
tinually stocked  with  many  tons  of  coarse  brown 
stuff  to  cover  the  insides  of  boxes  and  crates.  There 
are  other  uses  of  this  product.  <  Only  a  short  time 
ago  the  manager  of  one  of  the  largest  Hawaiian 
pineapple  companies  reported  that  his  concern  was 
using  many  tons  of  heavy  paper,  not  merely  in 
wrapping  and  packing,  but  in  planting.  A  roll  of 
heavy  paper  is  laid  out  on  the  ground  and  the  pine- 
apples planted  through  holes,  thus  tending  to  pre- 
vent all  weed  growth  adjacent  to  the  plants.  This 
process  obviates  the  necessity  of  hoeing,  protects 
the  roots  and  leaves,  and  prevents  the  ground  from 
being  baked  too  hard  or  washed  away. 

Think  of  the  builder's  paper  for  lining  roofs  and 
walls,  for  covering  floors,  etc. !  Think  of  the  vari- 
ous substitutes  for  wall  plaster — great  thin  sheets 
of  heavy  cardboard-like  material  made  largely  from 
compressed  wood  pulp,  with  perhaps  a  mixture  of 
asbestos  as  a  better  fire  preventive !  During  the 
recent  war,  it  was  this  material  that  made  possible 
the  construction  of  the  countless  huge  temporary 
office  buildings  in  Washington.  In  1917  the  War 
Industries  Board  reported  that  the  sale  of  this 
product  amounted  to  a  hundred  and  fifty-six  million 
dollars  per  annum. 


THE  PAPER  AGE 


47 


Blotting  paper  is  only  a  sheet  of  wood  pulp  mixed 
with  a  short  fibred  cotton  to  increase  its  absorbent 
power,  while  similarly  paste-board  and  other  special 


Wood  pulp  in  the  form  of  papier  mache  is  often  pressed  into  molded 
ornaments  for  ceilings,  walls  and  mantel-pieces.    Many  lacquered  bowls 
and  dishes  are  also  made  from  wood  pulp  and  old  paper  boiled  and 
ground  up  with  glue  or  paste. 


papers  represent  the  use  of  a  large  quantity  of 
wood.  Fortunately,  these  materials  are  generally 
manufactured  where  waste  paper  can  be  obtained. 


48  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

and  that,  along  with  sugar  cane  refuse  and  other 
fibrous  materials,  forms  the  chief  ingredient. 

A  department  store  would  certainly  hesitate  to 
make  a  window  display  of  "paper"  stockings,  nor 
would  the  term  be  correct.  Nevertheless  the  raw 
material  used  for  artificial  silks  is  largely  the  same 
as  that  used  in  paper  manufacture,  and  spruce  fibres, 
obtained  by  a  chemical  process,  are  woven  into 
hosiery  and  other  articles  quite  as  effectively  and 
durably  as  real  silk-worm  silk. 

Many  lacquered  bowls  and  dishes  are  made  of 
wood  pulp  and  old  paper  boiled  and  ground  up  with 
glue  and  paste.  This  material,  known  as  papier 
mache,  has  recently  been  used  very  widely  for  in- 
terior decorating  effects.  Pressed  into  molded  forms 
of  flowers,  baskets  and  other  ornaments  for  ceil- 
ings, walls,  mantel  pieces,  etc.,  it  is  very  easily 
handled  and  somewhat  less  brittle  than  pure  plaster. 
Celluloid,  which  is  ordinarily  a  product  obtained 
from  cotton  cellulose  treated  with  nitric  acid,  has 
also  been  manufactured  from  wood  pulp.  Indeed 
the  list  of  all  wood  pulp  and  paper  products  is 
endless. 

The  pulp  and  paper  industry  faces  the  future 
with  even  less  confidence  than  do  the  majority  of 
wood  users.  It  is  so  highly  organized  and  so  vast 
that  it  long  ago  began  to  look  ahead  and  wonder 


THE  PAPER  AGE 


49 


where  its  future  raw  material  was  to  come  from. 
Already  over  a  third  of  our  entire  pulpwood  supply 
is  grown  across  the  Canadian  border,  and  Canada, 
profiting  by  our  mistakes,  is  now  taking  steps  to 
restrict  the  cutting  of  timber.    This  means  that  our 


A  dense   and   continuous   forest  the   size  of  New  York  and  Pennsyl- 
vania together  might  under  proper  management  furnish  a  perpetual 
supply  of  wood  for  paper  manufacture. 

annual  importation  of  Canadian  pulpwood  has 
practically  reached  the  maximum,  and  for  the  re- 
maining two-thirds  we  will  have  to  look  after 
ourselves. 

Only    a    few    years    ago    paper    manufacturers 
thought  spruce  was  about  the  only  wood  they  could 


50  OUR  VANISHLNG   FORESTS 

use,  but  the  spruce  supply  was  not  unlimited,  and 
balsam,  hemlock,  and  many  hardwoods  began  to  be 
mentioned  with  it.  Brown  paper  manufacturers 
learned  to  use  the  yellow  pines  from  the  south,  Jack 
pine  and  even  Douglas  fir,  where  supplies  were  avail- 
able, and  paper  came  to  be  made  from  sawmill 
waste.  This  latter  development,  however,  has  been 
much  handicapped  by  the  fact  that  the  sawmills 
have  gradually  receded  to  the  west  and  left  the 
sister  industry  behind.  There  are,  of  course,  a 
number  of  paper  makers  on  the  Pacific  Coast,  but 
generally  speaking,  large  enough  contiguous  sup- 
plies of  the  proper  wood  to  justify  the  great  expense 
of  putting  up  plants  are  comparatively  rare.  Paper 
manufacturers  are  looking  for  the  future  even  to 
Alaska  where  there  is  still  hemlock  and  spruce  in 
abundance.  Remember,  however,  that  if  paper  is 
to  be  made  five  thousand  miles  away,  the  ultimate 
consumer  will  have  to  pay  the  cost  of  transportation. 
A  number  of  experiments  have  been  carried  on 
in  an  attempt  to  manufacture  paper  out  of  other 
materials  than  wood,  like  corn  stalks,  straw  and 
certain  grasses.  It  is  possible  to  make  some  kind  of 
paper  from  any  vegetable  fibre,  but  as  yet  nothing 
has  appeared  that  can  compete  with  wood  in  cheap- 
ness, availability  and  adaptability.  The  solution  of 
the  problem  of  raw  material  for  paper  making  still 


THE  PAPER  AGE  51 

lies  only  in  the  careful  protection  and  reforesting  of 
timber  lands.  Supposing  that  it  takes  about  fifty  or 
sixty  years  to  grow  good  pulpwood  spruce  and  that 
such  a  growing  forest  could  be  protected  from  fire 
and  other  losses,  a  tract  of  about  one  hundred 
thousand  square  miles  of  forest  could  then,  under 
proper  care  and  management,  produce  the  desired 
wood  crop  to  furnish  a  perpetual  supply  for  pulp 
manufacture.  This  means  an  area  about  the  size  of 
New  York  and  Pennsylvania  together,  but  is  less 
than  our  present  area  of  really  waste  lands  which 
the  United  States  Department  of  Agriculture  says 
could  readily  be  put  into  growing  forests. 

There  is  no  question  but  that  the  Paper  Age  can 
be  continued,  but  it  is  equally  clear  that  without  a 
very  great  change  in  present  methods,  and  probably 
in  present  costs,  we  will  some  day  find  ourselves  like 
Australia  and  New  Zealand,  in  the  position  where  a 
man  who  prints  thirty  pages  in  one  daily  newspaper 
stands  a  good  chance  of  landing  in  jail.  There  must 
be  first  a  proper  national  forestry  law,  there  must 
be  state  cooperation,  and  there  must  be  a  willingness 
on  the  part  of  the  public  as  well  as  the  industry  to 
cooperate. 


CHAPTER  VII 

Forest  to  Printing  Press 

Wood  pulp  and  paper  making. 

Logging  for  pulp  making  is  not  far  different  from 
the  process  of  getting  out  logs  for  lumber,  but  since 
it  is  possible  to  cut  the  wood  into  short  lengths  at 
the  start,  the  problem  of  transportation  is  much 
simplified.  Although  most  paper  companies  own 
their  own  land  and  cut  their  own  wood,  many 
private  owners  of  forests  and  wood-lots  near  these 
industries  find  a  ready  market  for  cord-wood  of  the 
proper  size.  A  large  company  in  the  south  recently 
made  special  efforts  to  stimulate  pine  growing 
among  the  farmers  in  its  immediate  neighborhood, 
while  in  New  Hampshire  cord-wood  in  four  foot 
lengths  is  a  readily  marketed  product  of  the  farm 
wood-lot.  The  pulp  and  paper  companies  are  begin- 
ning to  recognize  that  the  stimulation  of  the  wood- 
lot  idea  is  important  to  their  future,  not  merely  for 
the  sake  of  the  few  additional  cords  thus  obtained, 
but  because,  through  the  farmer's  appreciation  of 
the  value  of  wood,  he  becomes  eager  to  cooperate  in 

52 


FOREST  TO  PRINTING  PRESS  53 

the  all  important  question  of  fire  protection.  The 
maintenance  of  every  wood-using  industry,  and  thus 
indirectly  of  the  future  supply  of  all  wood  products 
for  home  or  commerce,  will  depend  more  and  more 
upon  the  amount  of  cooperation  given  by  the  public. 

The  increasing  shortage  of  pulp-wood  has  had  a 
most  interesting  effect  upon  the  price.  In  1916  the 
rate  paid  for  rough  wood  delivered  at  the  mills 
varied  between  $4.00  and  $11.00  per  cord^  while 
during  the  boom  in  1919  the  same  wood  brought 
from  $15.00  to  $18.00.  This  naturally  resulted  in 
stimulating  the  interest  of  the  local  farmers  and 
land-owners.  Although  a  condition  of  temporary 
over-production  existing  throughout  the  country  has 
since  meant  a  practical  cessation  of  buying  wood  in 
the  local  market,  we  are  no  further  away  from  a 
paper  shortage  in  1922  than  we  were  in  1919  and 
'20.  In  the  long  run  the  money  value  of  all  wood 
on  the  stump  cannot  lessen,  but  with  a  realization 
of  the  diminishing  wood  supply  is  bound  to  increase. 

At  the  mill  the  wood  bolts  are  stacked  by  ma- 
chinery in  great  piles  to  supply  the  machines 
throughout  the  year,  and  the  process  of  manufac- 
ture begins.  The  first  step  is  the  removal  of  the 
bark,  as  the  presence  of  bark  fragments  greatly 
weakens  and  discolors  the  finished  product.  This 
process  is  usually  conducted  by  putting  the  billets 


54  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

into  a  huge  barrel-shaped  container  which  constantly 
tumbles  them  against  rows  of  spikes;  but  hand  labor 
is  also  needed  for  a  thorough  job.  There  are  two 
general  types  of  wood  pulp;  that  made  by  grinding 
the  wood  billets  against  huge  stones  under  a  con- 
tinuous jet  of  water  or  steam,  and  that  obtained 
from  dissolving  chips  in  an  acid.  The  first  method 
is  the  simpler,  but  since  the  grind-stone  tends  to 
break  the  wood  fibres,  paper  made  from  ground- 
wood  alone  would  not  possess  much  strength. 
Where  acid  is  used,  the  fibres  come  out  whole.  Or- 
dinary newspaper  is  a  mixture  of  about  one  part 
chemical  pulp  to  three  or  four  parts  of  groundwood, 
while  writing  paper,  book  paper,  wrapping  paper 
and  the  like  are  chiefly  made  from  chemical  pulp 
only. 

The  secret  of  paper  manufacture  lies  in  having 
the  pulp  absolutely  clean  and  free  from  impurities. 
It  has  to  be  washed,  stirred  and  beaten,  and  washed 
again  and  again  before  the  material  is  ready  to  mix 
with  the  necessary  rosin  or  other  sizing  material  and 
be  rolled  into  paper.  A  large  supply  of  thoroughly 
fresh  and  clean  water  is  therefore  absolutely  essen- 
tial. The  pulp,  carried  about  in  liquid  form, 
eventually  comes  into  the  paper  room  and  sprays 
onto  a  thin  screen  which  leads  over  and  under  a 
series  of  very  hot  rollers  until  the  pulpy  sheet  has 


FOREST  TO   PRINTING  PRESS 


55 


hardened  sufficiently  to  carry  its  own  weight.  Then 
the  screen  leaves  and  the  sheet,  continually  being 
dried  by  the  steam  heated  drums,  hurries  on  the 
length  of  the  room  to  a  great  roll  at  the  end.  Fre- 
quently in  the  manufacture  some  little  weakness 
develops  and  the  sheet  tears  across.  In  such  an 
event,  before  the  machines  can  be  stopped,  the 
whole  room  may  be  filled  with  damp  paper  and  the 


The  wood   bolts   intended   for  pulp  manufacture  are  usually  floated 

down  the  river  to  the  mill  where  they  are  stacked  by  machinery  in  great 

piles  to  supply  the  machines  throughout  the  year. 


attendants  fairly  overwhelmed  with  its  billows. 
This  waste,  however,  goes  back  into  the  beaters  and 
soon  comes  out  again  in  liquid  form  for  another 
try.  Modern  machines  produce  newsprint  at  very 
high  speed  in  rolls  fifteen  to  seventeen  feet  wide. 
The  chemical  processes  of  pulp  making  are  ex- 


56  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

ceedingly  interesting,  but  the  writer  would  advise 
all  those  suffering  from  a  supersensitive  nose  to 
content  themselves  with  a  mere  description  and 
keep  away  from  the  factory.  Commercial  methods 
vary,  but  all  involve  cooking  wood  chips  in  a  strong 
chemical,  repeated  washing,  and  then  perhaps 
evaporation  of  the  liquor  to  reclaim  the  valuable 
acid  salts.  Newsprint-making  usually  employs  the 
so-called  "sulphite"  process,  in  which  various  com- 
pounds of  sulphurous  acid  form  the  basis.  Sulphite 
pulp  makes  up  over  one-half  of  all  the  chemical 
pulp  produced  in  the  country.  This  method  works 
very  well  for  spruce  and  similar  light  woods  which 
do  not  have  a  very  heavy  resinous  content,  but  such 
woods  as  pine,  which  furnish  a  very  large  percent- 
age of  the  pulp  for  wrapping  paper,  cardboard  and 
the  like,  have  to  be  somewhat  differently  treated. 
Compounds  obtained  from  sulphuric  rather  than 
sulphurous  acid  are  here  used,  sodium  hydroxide 
and  sodium  sulphite  being  the  principal  digestive 
agents.  The  "sulphate"  process  as  distinguished 
from  the  "sulphite,"  at  present  only  accounts  for 
about  three  per  cent,  of  our  total  chemical  pulp,  but 
has  great  potential  importance  for  the  manufacture 
of  so-called  Kraft  paper  from  sawmill  and  forest 
waste.  An  older  and  somewhat  better  known 
process  for  treating  hardwoods  and  other  species 


FOREST  TO  PRINTING  PRESS  57 

which  cannot  be  conveniently  handled  by  the 
"sulphite"  method,  boils  the  wood  chips  under 
pressure  with  caustic  soda. 

The  manufacture  of  groundwood  pulp — that  is, 
the  pulp  obtained  as  above  mentioned  from  grinding 
alone — Is  comparatively  simple,  but  in  addition  to 
its  drawback  in  producing  very  short  fibres,  it  re- 
quires a  tremendous  amount  of  power  and  can  only 
be  carried  on  where  such  power  Is  available  and 
cheap.  Steam  in  sufficient  quantity  is  usually  too 
expensive,  so  that  direct  water  power  or  hydro- 
electric development  at  the  plant  is  absolutely  essen- 
tial. This  has  been  an  Important  factor  In  deter- 
mining the  location  of  the  chief  pulp  and  paper 
manufacturing  centers. 

With  Its  favorable  combination  of  wood  supply, 
adequate  power,  clean  water  and  accessibility  to  the 
market.  New  York  State  has  been  one  of  the  leaders 
In  paper  making.  Maine,  New  Hampshire,  Penn- 
sylvania and  Wisconsin  belong  in  the  same  group, 
while  Virginia  and  West  Virginia  are  not  far  be- 
hind. In  the  central  section  of  the  country,  Michi- 
gan still  leads,  but  we  must  skip  over  to  the  Pacific 
Coast  to  find  in  Oregon  the  few  other  important 
developments.  There  Is  no  doubt  that  the  utiliza- 
tion of  southern  pine  mill  waste  under  the 
"sulphate"  process,  will  tend  to  bring  such  states  as 


58  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

Louisiana,  Mississippi  and  Arkansas  very  much 
more  to  the  fore,  as  material  sufficient  for  the  manu- 
facture of  many  thousand  tons  of  paper  daily  is 
there  available. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
A  Friend  Unrecognized 

Chemical  uses  of  wood;  the  tanning  of  leather; 
charcoal ;  alcohol  and  other  products  of  wood  distilla- 
tion ;  dyes  made  from  wood. 

Wood  comes  to  us  through  the  chemical  indus- 
tries in  many  other  strange  forms.  Let  us  take  tan- 
ning materials  for  example.  Tannin  is  what  may  be 
called  an  astringent — a  soluble  agent  acting  upon 
animal  skins  in  such  a  way  as  to  preserve  them  and 
render  them  pliable,  strong  and,  to  a  degree,  water- 
proof. It  is  found  in  nearly  all  varieties  of  wood 
but  only  in  a  few  to  a  sufficient  extent  to  be  com- 
mercially valuable.  The  art  of  tanning  was  under- 
stood long  before  America  was  discovered,  having 
probably  been  practised  even  by  the  ancient 
Egyptians.  The  American  Indians  knew  how  to 
preserve  deer  skins  by  the  use  of  hemlock  bark,  and 
as  the  country  grew,  this  bark  became  the  chief 
commercial  source  of  tanning  materials. 

From  these  small  beginnings  has  grown  up  an 
American  industry  whose  product  is  valued  at  over 
59 


60  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

two  hundred  million  dollars  a  year,  its  output  in 
shoes  alone  amounting  to  some  250  million  pairs. 
In  so  far  as  tannin  is  obtained  from  bark  alone,  and 
the  rest  of  the  tree  is  used  for  lumber,  the  tanning 
industry  has  no  great  effect  upon  our  wood  supply. 
Unfortunately,  however,  the  difficulties  of  transpor- 
tation have  sometimes  resulted  in  hundreds  of 
peeled  logs  being  left  in  the  woods  to  rot.  The 
wood  of  the  chestnut  tree  also  contains  a  high  per- 
centage of  tannin  capable  of  extraction,  and  today 
about  two-thirds  of  all  the  tannic  acid  produced  in 
the  United  States  is  derived  from  chestnut  trees 
cut  for  this  exclusive  purpose.  California  and 
southern  Oregon  possess  an  asset  of  great  value  in 
the  native  tan-bark  oak  which  has  been  widely  ex- 
ploited, while  the  forests  of  Washington  and 
Oregon  contain,  still  untouched,  great  quantities  of 
western  hemlock.  This  latter  wood,  although  quite 
different  in  many  characteristics  from  its  eastern 
relative,  is  also  a  tannin  producer,  but,  as  it  happens, 
the  western  forests  are  too  far  away  from  the  chief 
centers  of  the  tanning  industry,  and  it  pays  better 
to  import  from  the  abundant  supplies  of  South 
America  and  Europe  rather  than  foot  the  railway 
bill. 

Charcoal  is  another  interesting  wood  product.    It 
is  chiefly  used  in  the  manufacture  of  iron  and  steel, 


A  FRIEND  UNRECOGNIZED 


61 


but  also  for  the  making  of  gun-powder  and  ex- 
plosives, in  the  chemical  and  metallurgical  indus- 
tries, for  fuel  as  in  jewelry  manufacturing,  and  for 
medicinal  purposes.  Charcoal  alone  could  easily 
become  a  drug  on  the  market  for  there  is  any 
quantity   of   forest   and   wood   waste    suitable    for 


These  and  countless  other  products  we  owe  to  the  chemicals  obtained 
from  wood  distillation. 

cheap  manufacture  to  meet  the  limited  demand. 
However,  it  is  produced  in  most  sections  chiefly  as  a 
by-product  of  wood  distillation,  and  since  the  latter 
industry  still  maintains  itself  in  the  east  near  the 
market  for  its  product,  while  the  principal  lumber- 
ing industry  has  moved  to  the  south  and  far  west, 


62  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

not  waste  but  new  wood  direct  from  the  forest  is 
utilized.  The  old  problem  of  forest  exhaustion  and 
distribution  thus  adds  about  a  million  and  a  half 
cords  a  year  to  the  nation's  wood  bill. 

The  distillation  of  hard  and  soft  woods  is 
handled  by  different  methods.  The  modern  hard- 
wood process,  devolving  from  an  original  pit  or 
brick  kiln  method,  uses  batteries  of  metal  oven- 
retorts  heated  by  coal  or  coke.  The  gases  which 
are  thrown  off  while  the  wood  is  charring  and  later 
cooling  are  collected  with  very  little  loss,  and  are 
then  further  distilled  for  the  manufacture  of  the 
extremely  valuable  products  upon  which  the  industry 
is  founded.  The  first  of  these  is  acetate  of  lime,  a 
chemical  used  very  largely  in  the  textile  and  leather 
industries.  During  the  war  it  was  in  great  demand 
for  the  making  of  high  explosives.  A  better  known 
product  is  wood  alcohol,  used  chiefly  in  paint  and 
varnish  manufacture,  but  also  in  the  preparation  of 
dyes,  photograph  films,  and  even  in  stiffening  hats. 
We  know  it  best  as  a  fuel  for  small  lamps  and, 
when  taken  internally,  as  a  deadly  poison.  The 
wood-tar  residue  is  generally  used  as  fuel  in  chemi- 
cal manufacture.  Nevertheless,  under  the  name  of 
wood-creosote,  it  has  considerable  medicinal  value 
and  there  is  some  likelihood  that,  if  the  process  of 
manufacture  could  be  sufficiently  cheapened,  a  broad 


A  FRIEND  UNRECOGNIZED 


63 


market  might  also  be  found  in  competition  with 
coal-tar  creosote  as  a  wood  preservative  and  disin- 
fectant. 

The  principal  products  of  soft-wood  distillation 
are  turpentine,  rosin  and  tar  oils.     This  turpentine 


By  the  use  of  portable  distillation  retorts  the  land  owner  who  desires 

to  get  rid  of  tree  stumps  may  obtain  at  least  a  partial  return  for  his 

trouble  and  labor. 

generally  does  not  have  as  good  a  market  as  that 
obtained  by  bleeding  the  living  trees,  but  is  satisfac- 
tory for  making  paints  for  the  outside  of  buildings. 
The  rosin  skimmed  off  during  the  refining  process  is 
used  in  the  manufacture  of  linoleum,  ink,  soap  and 
paper.      The    tar-oils    are    employed    in    the    paint 


64  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

industry  or  may  be  further  refined  for  medicinal 
purposes,  while  the  pure  tar  which  remains  is 
largely  sold  for  caulking  ships. 

Soft-wood  distillation  has  a  great  future  in  the 
south  as  a  means  of  utilizing  not  only  the  waste  of 
the  lumbering  industry,  but  also  the  stumps  obtained 
in  clearing  the  ground  for  agricultural  purposes. 
Recently  considerable  attention  has  been  given  to 
the  manufacture  of  portable  distillation  retorts,  by 
the  use  of  which  the  farmer  or  other  land  owner, 
who  desires  to  get  rid  of  tree  stumps,  may  obtain  at 
least  a  partial  return  for  his  trouble  and  labor.  In 
some  instances  such  operations  appear  to  have  been 
quite  profitable. 

A  similar  and  even  older  use  of  certain  varieties 
of  wood  is  in  the  manufacture  of  dyes.  Vegetable 
or  tree  dyes  preceded  modern  aniline  dyes  by  many 
years  and  were  until  about  1865  the  principal  source 
of  all  our  dye  stuffs.  With  aniline  dye  competition 
the  trade  fell  off,  but  in  1914  with  the  outbreak  of 
war  and  the  practical  cessation  of  aniline  imports, 
vegetable  dyes  again  attained  considerable  impor- 
tance. 

Butter-nut  as  a  dye  material  was  well  known  to 
the  American  pioneers  who  probably  learned  of  its 
quality  from  the  Indians,  but  the  yellowish  color  is 
not  very  satisfactory.    The  Red  Man,  too,  through 


A  FRIEND  UNRECOGNIZED  65 

his  desire  for  a  striking  color,  first  utilized  the 
Osage  Orange,  a  tree  native  to  portions  of 
Arkansas,  Oklahoma,  and  Texas.  In  appearance  it 
is  rather  irregular  growing  and  stunted,  but  valuable 
for  decorative  purposes.  The  heavy,  hard  and  dura- 
ble wood  is  also  much  in  demand  for  wagon  and 
vehicle  making.  The  coloring  extract  is  chiefly- 
found  in  the  wood  itself,  but  comes  also  from  the 
bark  and  roots,  and  under  the  trade  name  of 
"Aurantine,"  is  considered  a  valuable  and  useful  dye 
capable  of  withstanding  light  or  washing.  Although 
best  used  on  wools  it  can  also  be  applied  to  paper, 
wood,  leather,  and  cotton,  where  it  gives  various 
^shades  of  orange,  gold,  tan  and  olive.  Many  thou- 
sand tono  of  this  wood,  representing  refuse  from  the 
vehicle  manufacture  above  mentioned,  are  now 
wasted  every  year  because  conditions  have  not 
apparently  justified  an  extension  of  its  use  in  com- 
petition with  aniline  colors.  Many  dye-woods  are 
imported  from  South  and  Central  America  and  the 
West  Indies,  but  the  only  other  North  American 
tree  at  present  utilized  for  this  purpose  is  sumach, 
and  that  only  to  a  small  extent.  Used  on  cloth  and 
fine  leather  it  also  gives  a  yellow  tone.  We  some- 
times hear  the  claim  that  vegetable  colors  in  general 
are  more  durable  than  the  coal-tar  aniline  dyes. 
This  is  not  necessarily  true  and  future  developments 


66  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

will  rather  depend  upon  relative  costs  and  ease  of 
application. 

The  chemical  industries  are  constantly  finding 
new  uses  of  wood.  One  such  recent  discovery  per- 
mits the  production  of  ethyl-  or  grain  alcohol,  as 
distinguished  from  the  wood  alcohol  previously 
mentioned,  while  others  have  even  made  possible 
the  manufacture  of  baking  powder  and  live  stock 
feed.  These  processes  are  of  course  complicated, 
but  all  of  them  are  now  graduating  from  the  field  of 
mere  experiment  to  that  of  real  economic  value. 
Indeed  wood  is  a  vast  reservoir  of  organic  material 
and  its  ultimate  uses  through  the  developments 
of  creative  chemistry  are  almost  unlimited. 


CHAPTER  IX 

Syrup  and  Sap 

Products    obtained     from     growing    trees;     maple 
sugar,  turpentine,  wood  creosote,  tar,  etc. 

Who,  as  he  stood  before  the  window  of  a  Child's 
Restaurant  watching  the  white  capped  chef  turning 
golden  brown  disks  on  the  griddle,  has  not  smacked 
his  lips  at  the  thought  of  wheat  cakes  and  maple 
syrup?  But  do  we  ever  stop  to  think  of  where  that 
syrup  comes  from?  The  American  traveler  in 
foreign  lands  may  look  far,  yet  nowhere  can  he  find 
this  particular  delight.  Maple  syrup  is  a  unique 
product,  an  annual  crop  from  a  tree  crop,  and  yet 
only  one  illustration  of  the  many  sided  usefulness  of 
trees.  Our  forefathers  apparently  learned  of  it 
from  the  Indians,  but,  as  the  methods  then  em- 
ployed were  exceedingly  crude,  various  improve- 
ments have  since  been  necessary.  In  our  most 
modern  maple  sugar  operations  the  sap  is  collected 
in  covered  metal  buckets  fastened  to  the  trunk, 
piped  or  hauled  on  sleds  to  a  central  point,  and 
evaporated  in  pans  divided  into  successive  compart- 
67 


68  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

ments.  For  every  four  mature  trees  in  his  "sugar 
bush"  the  operator  may  obtain  as  much  as  one  bar- 
rel of  sap,  which  in  turn  will  boil  down  to  a  single 
gallon  of  pure  syrup.  Under  the  old  methods  it 
was  often  necessary  to  cook  the  sap  continuously 
for  upwards  of  twenty-four  hours,  but  today,  the 
new  style  evaporators  have  reduced  the  time  to 
about  seven  hours. 

The  Sugar  Maple,  a  native  of  New  England, 
New  York,  Pennsylvania,  Ohio  and  other  Jake 
states,  is  the  source  of  our  chief  supplies.  It  is  a 
friendly  tree,  willing  to  live  in  a  great  variety  of 
soils  and  locations,  but  seldom  a  rapid  grower.  A 
really  large  specimen,  three  or  four  hundred  years 
old,  may  be  only  a  little  over  one  hundred  feet  tall 
and  Its  largest  trunk  diameter  about  four  feet. 
Nevertheless  this  tree  is  easy  to  plant  and  cultivate, 
and  with  patience  there  is  but  little  difficulty  In 
establishing  a  "sugar  bush."  Curiously  enough  the 
so-called  Black  Maple  Is  considered  by  many,  espe- 
cially in  and  about  Vermont,  as  superior  to  its 
cousin  both  as  to  quantity  and  quality  of  sap,  while 
In  the  Central  States  the  Red  Maple  plays  a  limited 
part.  It  has  the  advantage,  at  least,  of  being  a 
more  rapid  grower.  The  Silver  Maple  and  several 
others  are  of  minor  Importance. 

Although    cane    and   beets   control   the   common 


SYRUP  AND  SAP 


69 


sugar  markets,  the  status  of  maple  products  as  lux- 
uries cannot  be  injured,  and  the  demand  has  steadily 
increased.  The  rate  of  production,  however,  re- 
mains in  the  neighborhood  of  45,000,000  pounds 
per  annum.  About  seven-eighths  of  the  total 
product  is   adulterated  with   corn  syrup   or   other 


Founding  the  maple  sugar  industry. 

sugars  before  it  reaches  the  ultimate  consumer,  and 
as  he  usually  does  not  know  the  difference,  it  is  very 
difficult  to  secure  really  pure  maple  syrup.  A  few 
of  us,  however,  who  have  come  to  know  its  pale 
golden  color  and  unexcelled  taste  will  have  naught 
to  do  with  the  darker  commercial  product.     Indeed 


70  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

it  is  really  this  ease  of  cheap  adulteration  and  the 
facile  gullability  of  the  public,  which  limits  the 
amount  of  production.  There  is  no  shortage  of 
sugar-producing  trees.  Their  value,  like  that  of 
fruit  and  nut  trees,  is  too  well  appreciated. 

Maple  syrup  is  far  from  being  the  only  important 
product  of  tree  sap.  As  mentioned  in  the  preceding 
chapter,  turpentine,  rosin  and  wood-tar  are  some- 
times obtained  by  distillation  of  pine  wood,  but  our 
chief  supplies  of  these  products  come  rather  from 
the  sap  of  the  living  trees.  This  is  an  old  and 
important  industry,  dating  back  to  the  time  when 
wood-tar  for  caulking  ships  was  the  chief  product 
desired,  and  indeed  all  turpentine  and  tar  products 
are  still  known  as  naval  stores.  Several  hundred 
years  ago  a  famous  French  minister,  desiring  to 
protect  a  rich  wine  growing  land  from  the  storms 
of  dune  sand  blowing  in  from  the  seacoast,  planted 
a  large  area  in  southwestern  France  to  maritime 
pine.  As  a  matter  of  fact  he  not  only  accomplished 
his  immediate  object  but  laid  the  foundation  of 
Europe's  turpentine  industry.  In  this  country  a 
number  of  our  southern  pines  are  equally  produc- 
tive, and  today  as  one  rides  on  the  train  through 
sections  of  Georgia,  Florida,  Alabama,  Mississippi 
and  Louisiana,  nearly  every  pine  tree  appears  to  be 
hung  with  small  earthenware  cups. 


SYRUP  AND  SAP  71 

For  many  of  our  large  southern  lumber  com- 
panies, the  production  of  naval  stores  has  been  a 
source  of  considerable  revenue.  Proper  turpentin- 
ing does  not  seriously  affect  the  strength  of  the 
wood  or  its  usefulness  as  lumber,  nor  is  the  process 


The  production  of  naval  stores  has  played  an  important  part  in  the 
economic  development  of  the  South. 

necessarily  harmful  to  the  living  trees.  It  is  possi- 
ble, of  course,  to  milk  a  tree  to  death,  and  improper 
methods  have  resulted  in  much  killing  of  pine 
timber — particularly  small  trees — but  periodical 
tapping  with  recuperative  periods  in  between  has 
proved  economically  sound.     The  common  practice 


72  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

in  this  country,  however,  is  to  begin  turpentining 
several  years  before  the  tree  is  to  be  cut  down  for 
lumber,  keeping  the  production  continually  at  its 
maximum  capacity.  Turpentine  operations  are  not 
merely  seasonal  but  require  constant  watching  to 
empty  the  receptacles,  scrape  off  the  gummy  rosin 
from  the  face  of  the  scar,  and  repeatedly  re-chip  the 
wood. 

Owing  to  the  inflammability  of  the  gum,  very 
thorough  fire  protection  is  necessary.  In  our 
southern  states,  however,  it  is  often  satisfactory  to 
clear  a  space  about  each  tree  and  then  deliberately 
burn  the  rest  of  the  area,  the  brush  and  dried  grass 
which  might  cause  an  accidental  and  really  danger- 
ous conflagration  being  thus  destroyed. 

The  products  obtained  are  similar  to  those  of 
soft-wood  distillation,  but  it  is  generally  considered 
that  spirits  of  turpentine  distilled  from  resinous  sap 
are  of  higher  grade,  and  they  accordingly  bring 
better  prices.  The  operation  differs,  however,  in 
that  the  wood  itself  is  not  distilled  but  only  the 
semi-liquid  rosin,  and  copper  and  iron  retorts  ac- 
cordingly take  the  place  of  air-tight  charcoal  ovens. 
The  distillate,  which  comes  from  a  worm  shaped 
copper  condenser,  is  collected  in  barrels  and  the 
turpentine  skimmed  off.  The  remainder  is  more  or 
less  pure  rosin. 


SYRUP  AND  SAP  73 

It  will  be  remembered  that  the  chief  use  of  tur- 
pentine is  for  thinning' paints  and  varnishes,  but  it  is 
also  used  in  cloth  printing,  in  the  manufacture  of 
rubber  articles,  and  in  a  great  variety  of  other 
chemicals  and  medicines.  Rosin  is  used  chiefly  in 
soap  making,  but  also  in  paper  manufacture,  for 
water-proofing  barrels,  and  in  making  linoleum, 
ceiling  wax,  oil-cloth,  roofing,  lubricants  and  ink. 
Small  quantities  are  utilized  by  the  chemical  indus- 
try in  innumerable  other  ways. 

The  value  of  naval  stores  produced  in  America 
approaches  forty  million  dollars  per  annum,  but 
this  amount  is  not  all  consumed  at  home  as  our 
exports  are  very  large.  Florida  is  the  chief  pro- 
ducer with  Georgia  and  Louisiana  next.  The  indus- 
try has  in  the  past  played  an  important  part  in  the 
economic  development  of  these  regions,  but,  due  to 
the  rapid  depletion  of  the  timber  supply,  it  is  now 
waning.  Possibly  the  southern  farmers  and  small 
land  owners,  following  the  example  of  the  maple 
sugar  growers  of  the  north,  will  develop  sufficient 
foresight  to  remedy  the  situation,  but  there  is  a 
serious  difficulty  to  be  encountered.  The  unit 
hitherto  necessary  for  profitable  production  of 
naval  stores,  consists  of  from  ten  to  twenty  "crops" 
of  about  ten  thousand  scars  or  "boxes"  each,  and, 
although  there  may  be  a  considerable  number  of 


74  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

boxes  to  the  acre,  this  means  that  a  minimum  unit 
requires  in  the  neighborhood  of  two  thousand  acres 
of  well  timbered  land.  If  the  difficulty  is  solved  it 
can  only  be  through  some  such  cooperative  system 
of  sap  collection  and  distillation  as  will  permit  the 
effective  use  of  small  wood-lots. 


CHAPTER  X 

.    Trees  and  Torrents 

The  value  of  growing  forests  as  a  means  of 
protection  against  erosion,,  landslides  and  floods; 
afforestation  in  relation  to  city  and  town  watersheds 
and  water  supplies. 

Every  spring  we  read  of  the  great  damage 
caused  by  cloud-bursts  and  floods,  of  lives  lost,  and 
property  swept  away.  It  Is  always  difiicult  to  as- 
sign a  specific  reason  for  such  catastrophies  of 
nature,  but  we  are  now  beginning  to  realize  that  the 
denuding  of  the  forests  Is,  In  part,  directly  or  In- 
directly responsible.  It  cannot  be  denied  that  trees 
alone  through  their  interlacing  system  of  tiny  roots 
and  through  the  layer  of  spongy  humus  which  they 
engender,  conserve  the  moisture  from  melting  snows 
or  sudden  rains,  and  allow  it  to  trickle  slowly 
through  without  washing  off  the  soil,  while  a  forest 
cover  also  tends  to  break  the  force  of  rain,  and 
shades  the  snow  so  as  to  allow  its  gradual  melting. 

The  Influence  of  large  areas  of  forest  In  stabiliz- 
ing rainfall  should  also  be  considered.  There  are 
no  hard  and  fast  rules  to  be  applied.  A  single  llm- 
75 


76 


OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 


ited  forest  can  have  no  appreciable  effect,  but  it  may 
be  safely  accepted  that  over  large  areas  forests  do 
have  a  very  tempering  influence.  The  upper  hills 
and  mountains  are  often  swathed  in  clouds  without  a 
drop  of  rain  falling,  but  trees  through  their  leaves 


For  catastrophies  of  this  nature  forest  planting  is  the  only  permanent 
remedy. 

or  needles  act  very  much  like  the  wick  of  a  kerosene 
lamp,  catching  the  moisture  from  cloud  and  fog  and 
allowing  it  to  drip  upon  the  ground,  thus  continually 
feeding  the  streams  and  watering  the  valleys  below. 
Careful  observations  made  over  a  period  of  many 
years  as  between  a  wooded  mountain  section  and  a 


TREES  AND  TORRENTS 


77 


neighboring  treeless  area,  have  conclusively  proved 
that  the  wooded  section  receives  more  regular  and 
constant  watering,  while,   at  the  same  time,   it  is 
reasonably  free  from  the  terrors  of  cloud-bursts. 
Not  only  do  the  railroads  and  the  towns  beneath 


^^^.V^.":^ 


-.^41^^^^- 


The   control   of  mountain    torrents    through    the  creation  of  forests 
means  a  broad  extension  of  irrigation  and  also  of  hydro-electric   develop- 
ment. 

the  mountains  need  protection,  but  also  the 
meadows  must  be  continuously  watered  and  made 
safe  for  farming  and  cattle  grazing.  What  does  the 
expenditure  of  a  few  millions  amount  to  if  it  will 
mean  an  increase  of  many  times  that  sum  in  a  na- 
tion's food  production?     The  United  States  Gov- 


78  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

ernment  has  recognized  this  in  its  reclamation  proj- 
ects, namely,  the  building  of  the  great  dams  for 
permanent  water  supply  and  irrigation  in  the  west, 
and  in  its  acquisition  of  areas  along  the  important 
watersheds  as  National  Forests.  To  deal  with 
specific  sources  of  trouble  and  actually  replant  the 
forests  needed  as  a  protection,  is  only  a  step  further. 
The  difficulty  is  that  under  our  system  of  democracy 
federal  or  even  state  action  is  a  slow  process.  We 
have  seen  so  many  attempts  to  exploit  the  govern- 
ment for  the  benefit  of  private  individuals  that  our 
law-makers  have  become  somewhat  suspicious  of 
every  project  now  suggested;  yet  with  growing 
necessity,  Increased  public  Interest,  and  education  as 
to  the  possible  remedy  at  hand,  these  objections  will 
be  banished. 

But  let  us  see  how  other  nations  regard  this  prob- 
lem. The  French  and  Swiss  governments  lay  Im- 
plicit faith  in  forest  planting  for  protective  pur- 
poses. Where  the  great  and  important  links  of 
railway  cross  the  Alps  and  Pyrenees  a  veritable 
plague  of  landslides  v.^as  once  suffered,  but  in  recent 
years  the  damage  has  been  almost  negligible.  How 
do  these  governments  go  about  it?  A  great  land- 
slide scar  with  its  potential  danger  from  loosening 
rocks  and  soil  cannot  be  cured  by  merely  sowing 
handfuls  of  tree   seed,    for   after   the   damage   has 


TREES  AND  TORRENTS 


79 


once  been  done  the  soil  Is  too  loose  and  unstable. 
The  first  step  usually  involves  the  construction  of 
walls,  dams,  reservoirs  and  artificial  stream  beds  to 
confine  the  future  course  of  the  water;  the  inter- 


Although  it  is  much  easier  to  obtain  tremendous  sums  for  engineering 
works  to  tap  and  control  a  known  water  supply,  a  number  of  our  well 
informed  men  believe  that  forest  planting  and  protection  would  accom- 
plish the  desired  object  better  and  more  cheaply  than  an  excess  of 
reservoir  construction. 


mediate  spaces  must  then  be  anchored  by  transplant- 
ing tough  rooted  grass  and  shrubs ;  and  then  at  last 
nursery  grown  tree  seedlings  may  be  brought  in  as 
a  beginning  of  the  permanent  forest  cover.  The 
operation  often  requires  years  of  labor  and  the  ex- 


80  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

penditure  of  enormous  sums,  but  it  is  the  only  real 
cure. 

Europe  regards  forest  planting  and  forest  protec- 
tion from  another  angle  too,  that  of  encouraging 
water-power  and  hydro-electric  development.  Her 
governments  have  progressed  much  further  than  we 
along  the  lines  of  successful  cooperation  with 
private  enterprises.  France  and  Germany  often  en- 
courage water-power  development,  and  at  the  same 
time  control  it  by  taking  a  sort  of  partnership  in 
the  enterprise.  It  has  frequently  been  established 
that,  where  thorough  forest  protection  and  exten- 
sion is  practised,  a  maximum  steady  flow  of  the  de- 
sired water-power  is  obtained  almost  entirely  with- 
out the  very  large  and  expensive  storage  reservoirs 
which  are  customary  and  necessary  with  us.  The 
trees  themselves  regulate  the  flow  from  the  melting 
mountain  snows  and  conserve  it  to  such  an  extent 
that  it  continues  throughout  the  year. 

Flood  prevention,  therefore,  is  only  part  of  the 
problem.  The  value  of  trees  as  water  conservers 
merges  equally  into  a  question  which  comes  far 
nearer  to  most  of  us  town  and  city  folk — our  own 
city  water  supplies.  Only  a  few  years  ago  New 
York  City  completed  its  vast  underground  river  to 
a  point  sixty  miles  away  in  the  Catskill  Mountains, 
yet,  although  still  well  supplied,  she  is  mindful  of 


TREES  AND  TORRENTS  81 

her  rapid  growth  and  continues  to  maintain  a  corps 
of  engineers  in  the  field.  The  reservoirs  of  the 
present  system  have  been  built  large  enough  to  hold 
the  maximum  run-off  from  all  the  surrounding 
slopes,  but  the  city  has  not  entirely  disregarded  the 
value  of  trees,  and  many  acres  about  its  reservoirs 
have  been  afforested.  Although  it  is  much  easier  to 
obtain  tremendous  sums  for  engineering  works 
which  will  tap  and  control  a  known  water  supply,  a 
number  of  our  well  informed  men  acquainted  with 
the  European  developments  above  mentioned,  be- 
lieve that  forest  planting  and  protection  in  America 
would  accomplish  the  desired  object  better  and  more 
cheaply  than  an  excess  of  reservoir  construction. 
While  admitting  the  value  of  trees  in  this  respect, 
let  us  neither  be  too  hasty  in  large  scale  experiment- 
ing nor  too  backward  to  profit  by  the  coming  ex- 
tension of  forest  growing  and  wood-crop  cultivation. 

The  city  of  Newark,  New  Jersey,  recently  ac- 
quired a  very  large  acreage  in  the  nearby  hills 
contiguous  to  its  water  supply.  Part  of  this  area 
already  has  a  considerable  forest  cover  and  such 
sections  as  need  it  are  gradually  being  planted  to 
extend  the  great  sponge  which  feeds  the  reservoir. 
Incidentally,  a  fine  park  and  recreation  ground  for 
the  people  will  thereby  be  created. 

Newark  is  going  only  a  step  further  with  an  idea 


82  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

already  proved  valuable  in  Connecticut  and  other 
states,  but  especially  in  England.  The  water  supply 
of  the  great  city  of  Liverpool  comes  from  the  Eng- 
lish "lake  district"  so  well  known  to  most  travelers. 
There  the  "catchment  areas,"  as  they  are  called,  are 
carefully  planted  and  maintained,  and  although 
most  of  the  forests  have  not  yet  attained  a  very 
considerable  age,  they  are  already  beginning  to  yield 
to  the  community  some  profit  from  their  wood 
products.  The  British  Government,  which  has  re- 
cently adopted  a  very  comprehensive  scheme  of 
afforestation  in  England,  Scotland,  and  Wales,  has 
arranged  to  cooperate  along  this  line  with  all  the 
cities  and  towns,  endeavoring  to  furnish  seedlings 
for  planting  as  well  as  technical  advice.  The  eco- 
nomic value  of  the  wood  products  is  emphasized, 
and  the  cities  are  shown  how  the  profit  thus  obtained 
may  not  only  pay  the  interest  upon  the  bonds  sold 
for  construction,  but  also  furnish  a  sinking  fund. 
What  a  difference  in  comparison  with  most  of  our 
cities'  financing,  wherein  bonds  to  cover  improve- 
ments are  sold  without  thought  of  obtaining  any 
revenue  except  such  as  may  come  from  the  tax- 
payer's pockets ! 


CHAPTER  XI 

The  World  Out  of  Doors 

The  aesthetic  importance  of  the  forests;  parks  and 
recreation  grounds;  memorial  tree  and  roadside 
planting;  birds  and  animals  of  the  forest. 

Are  we  such  a  money-loving  people  that  only 
commercial  values  and  a  foresight  to  provide  for 
our  future  needs  and  comforts  can  count?  I  think 
not.  What  would  childhood  become  without  the 
forest,  without  the  forest  stories  of  "Little  Red 
Riding  Hood,"  "The  Babes  in  the  Woods,"  "Sleep- 
ing Beauty"  and  "The  Three  Bears"?  And  grown- 
ups flock  to  "Peter  Pan."  There  is  something 
intangible  about  a  tree  which  has  made  it  through 
generations  one  of  man's  best  friends.  Last  summer 
I  journeyed  through  the  devastated  regions  of 
northern  France.  It  was  not  the  "Zone  Rouge"  or 
the  worst  scenes  of  devastation  that  interested  me 
most — like  many  Americans,  I  had  seen  enough  of 
that  during  the  war — but  the  roads  rebuilt,  and  the 
little  towns  and  villages  rising  again  from  the  flat 
plains.    They  looked  better  and  cleaner  than  before 

83 


84 


OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 


the  war,  for  modern  methods  have  introduced  nota- 
ble improvements,  but  something  was  lacking. 
Where  were  the  little  clumps  of  woodland,  the 
orchards,  and  the  welcome  shadows  before  the  door- 
yard?     They  were  gone,  and  all  that  great  region 


Can  anyone  say  that  we  do  not  love  and  care  for  trees  when  we  choose 
them  as  memorials  to  those  who  fell  honorably  for  their  country? 


which  had  once  carried  some  subtle  old  world  appeal 
now  lay  staring,  for  all  the  world  like  some  mush- 
room city  of  the  western  plains. 

Even  when  America  was  still  a  vast  unbounded 
forest  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  prairies,  there  were 


THE  WORLD  OUT  OF  DOORS  85 

some  to  cry  "Woodman  spare  that  tree,"  and  it  is 
with  something  of  this  old  love  for  trees,  a  desire 
to  see  a  little  of  America  as  it  used  to  be,  that  over 
six  million  people  visit  the  National  Forests  every 
summer.  The  National  Parks,  like  Yellowstone, 
Glacier,  and  the  big  tree  groves  of  California,  also 
come  in  for  their  share  of  tourists  and  campers,  and 
indeed  the  attractiveness  of  these  parks  as  public 
playgrounds  is  created  in  large  measure  by  the  pres- 
ence of  the  grand  old  trees.  Repeated  schemes  for 
commercial  exploitation  have  fallen  before  the 
weight  of  an  overwhelming  public  opinion.  If  we 
are  willing  to  travel  hundreds  of  miles  for  but  a 
few  weeks  of  forest  recreation,  what  if  we  could 
have  the  woods  everywhere  at  our  very  doors?  The 
artificial  planting  of  shade  trees  and  orchards  has 
transformed  parts  of  Southern  California  from  a 
treeless  desert  to  a  far-famed  paradise.  What  if 
the  environs  of  every  city,  village  and  town  could 
be  made  into  a  vast  park? 

Fifty  years  ago  the  legislature  of  the  State  of 
Nebraska  created  Arbor  Day  as  a  state  holiday  to 
be  devoted  to  the  planting  of  trees  by  school  chil- 
dren. A  very  large  portion  of  that  state  consisted 
of  flat  fertile  prairie  where  trees  were  particularly 
needed  to  afford  shelter  to  man  and  beast  from  the 
beating  summer  sun;  but  Nebraska  was  not  alone 


86  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

in  that  necessity,  and  within  a  few  years  the  Idea 
spread  to  nearly  every  state  in  the  Union.  It  has 
been  developing  ever  since;  first  the  planting  for 
roadside  protection  and  school  yard  beautification, 
and  then  the  development  of  the  town  and  city 
shade  tree  commission  for  protection  and  conserva- 
tion of  the  growing  trees  which  are  such  a  feature 
of  urban  and  suburban  beauty. 

Then  came  the  war.  Can  anyone  say  that  we  do 
not  love  and  care  for  trees  when  we  choose  them  as 
memorials  to  those  who  fell  honorably  for  their 
country?  From  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific  has 
spread  the  new  memorial  service  of  tree  planting. 
Along  our  highways  stands  an  ever  Increasing 
memorial  line;  In  our  parks  appear  sturdy  oaks, 
elms  and  maples  bearing  the  names  of  soldiers. 
Cities,  states,  men's  clubs  and  women's,  have  all 
taken  up  the  work.  One  Post  of  the  American 
Legion  has  already  begun  the  planting  of  a  real 
memorial  forest.  Beginning  with  a  few  plots  prom- 
ised for  the  purpose,  and  for  which  the  New  York 
State  Forestry  Department  has  already  set  aside 
some  two  hundred  thousand  seedlings,  the  men  of 
the  Herkimer,  New  York,  Post  will  acquire  and 
plant  about  five  thousand  acres  of  land.  They  have 
gone  beyond  the  individual  memorial  idea  to  that  of 
a  monument  perpetually  renewed,  a  monument  such 


THE  WORLD  OUT  OF  DOORS 


87 


as  no  stone  or  marble  could  accomplish  in  that  it 
will  itself,  from  its  wood  yield,  furnish  funds  to  aid 
the  injured  and  care  for  the  disabled. 

The  memorial  tree  idea  will  never  stop  within 
the  uses  of  its  present  purpose.     It  is  going  on  al- 


The  present  high  prices  of  furs  are  in  part  the  result  of  forest  destruction. 

ready.  Recently  a  railroad  corporation  planted  an 
honor  row  of  trees  for  employees  who  had  been  fifty 
or  more  years  loyally  in  its  service,  and  now  close 
upon  this,  a  plan  has  been  suggested  for  a  vast 
forest  park  memorial  to  the  essential  unity  of  all 
English  speaking  nations. 


88  OUR  VANISHING  FORESTS 

And  then,  there  are  the  forest  birds  and  animals. 
Indeed  birds  are  nature's  foresters,  for  they  require 
no  appropriation  from  a  Department  of  Agricul- 
ture to  pursue  their  work  of  devouring  insects  and 
other  destroyers,  which  are  alike  the  enemy  of  farm 
and  city  dwellers.  Even  the  much  criticized  hawks 
and  owls  prey  upon  rabbits  and  mice  which  live  by 
gnawing  the  bark  of  young  seedlings.  Bird  lovers, 
therefore,  from  befriending  the  birds  came  to  be- 
friend the  forests,  and,  while  trees  still  seemed  to 
stand  as  an  obstacle  to  the  advance  of  civilization, 
societies  were  already  setting  aside  woodland  lots 
where  the  feathered  tribe  might  dwell  and  multiply 
unmolested.  It  is  significant,  perhaps,  that  one  of 
the  many  ways  in  which  America  has  extended  the 
hand  of  friendship  to  crippled  Europe  has  been  in 
the  gift  of  bird  houses  and  feeding  stations  for  the 
protection  of  birds  in  the  few  remaining  woods  of 
Belgium  and  northern  France. 

The  animals  of  the  woods  are  important  in  a  dif- 
ferent way.  Their  value  lies  chiefly  in  skins,  furs 
and  food,  but  unless  there  are  forests  in  which  they 
may  live  and  multiply,  those  supplies  will  soon  cease. 
Although  we  no  longer  rely  upon  game  It  neverthe- 
less furnishes  us  many  million  dollars  worth  of  food 
every  year.  In  England  the  propagation  of  game 
has  been  one  primary  reason  for  the  existence  of 


THE  WORLD  OUT  OF  DOORS  89 

forests.  The  revenue  from  shooting  permits  has 
often  been  found  to  pay  the  taxes  on  such  woodlands 
and  completely  maintain  them  until  they  reach  ma- 
turity and  are  ready  to  be  cut  and  replanted.  In- 
deed, when  the  submarine  menace  and  the  transport 
of  American  troops  resulted  in  a  serious  curtailment 
of  British  food  imports,  that  game,  long  before 
planted  and  carefully  preserved,  saved  the  lives  of 
countless  people. 

Hunting  may  be  either  a  benefit  or  a  menace,  de- 
pending upon  the  character  of  the  huntsman,  or  the 
regulations  enforced.  It  is  certainly  of  benefit,  how- 
ever, in  that  every  year  it  brings  six  or  seven  million 
men  and  women  into  contact  with  the  Out-of-doors ; 
and  if  the  lives  of  great  men  remind  us  truly,  con- 
tact with  the  forces  of  nature  thus  engendered,  has 
been  one  of  the  broadening  Influences  of  the  world. 
In  molding  public  opinion  to  save  the  forests,  nature 
lovers  have  led  the  way,  and  there  is  for  them  a 
great  present  opportunity,  not  through  mere  un- 
founded criticism  of  supposedly  heartless  lumber- 
men, but  through  such  an  understanding  and  knowl- 
edge of  the  whole  problem  as  will  permit  coopera- 
tion in  a  common  cause, 


CHAPTER  XII 

Impending  Catastrophe 

Our  vanishing   forest   resources;   Europe   shows   us 
the  remedy. 

Perchance  if  the  reader  has  followed  the  story  of 
the  forest  thus  far,  he  has  learned  something  of  the 
debt  he  owes  to  its  myriad  products,  its  protective 
influence,  and  its  broadening  effect  upon  the  human 
race.  A  mere  encomium,  however,  is  not  enough. 
We  may  praise  to  the  skies  the  source  of  our  bless- 
ings, and  still  shut  our  eyes  to  an  immediately  Im- 
pending catastrophe.  When  America  was  discov- 
ered a  vast  forest  covered  almost  the  whole  of  the 
eastern  and  southern  sections  of  the  country.  It 
gave  way  to  the  treeless  prairies  of  the  middle  west 
only  to  begin  again  at  the  Rocky  Mountains  and 
extend  with  but  few  breaks  for  occasional  deserts 
and  dry  valleys  to  the  Pacific,  a  total  estimated  at 
850  million  acres. 

Where  is  it  today?  Half  of  our  original  forest 
has  been  cleared  for  farms,  industries,  and  cities. 

90 


IMPENDING  CATASTROPHE 


91 


The  other  half,  comprising  about  463  million  acres, 
is  still  classified  as  forest  land,  but  here  too  the 
forests  themselves  have  largely  disappeared.  Only 
a  total  of  137  million  acres  located  almost  exclu- 
sively in  the  far  west  and  south,  still  contains  virgin 


{a^O,  000,000  /la-ei) 


^-fGS,  000,  OOOy^cr^i) 

I  /Aivas  aesoii/rny  oeyvcfoeo 
r   /^/vo  /i>i.e.  (a/,  ooo,  ooo^cresj 


Z/IA/03  a/ra^^/i/tr^eA3T0NC£ 
ywoMW/fs/^Tty  nMBCPeo  m7» 
CMi  77ff£s /wo  SECOND  e/xxym 

fiffS,  000,000  Aires) 


\ 


J!Metrr >4fl/ut//K  i.os-s  By  /''■/>r, 
A  ^VO,  000,  000  Caiic  feet) 


Cs-a,  000, 000, 000  CudCc  feet) 


I 


fS.  000,000,  OOOCaiic  feetj 


If  the  present  rate  of  forest  destruction   is   maintained,  it   is   safe  to 
estimate  that  within  the  hfetime  of.  a  child  born  today  our  timber  re- 
sources will  have  practically  vanished. 


timber.  The  balance,  amounting  to  326  million 
acres,  is  widely  distributed  throughout  many  east- 
ern, southern  and  western  states.  Three-fourths  of 
this  land  Is  covered  with  second  growth  and  cull 
trees,  while  the  remaining  one-fourth,  or  81  million 


92  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

acres,  has  been  so  badly  treated  that  the  land  now 
lies  absolutely  denuded  and  idle.  And  the  destruc- 
tion goes  on.  The  best  estimate  of  the  growth  of 
all  our  remaining  forests  shows  an  increment  of  6 
billion  cubic  feet  of  wood  a  year,  while  we  cut  in 
a  single  year  about  24  billion  cubic  feet,  and  allow 
forest  fires,  insects,  etc.,  to  destroy  nearly  2  billion 
cubic  feet  more.  If  this  rate  of  destruction  is  main- 
tained it  is  safe  to  estimate  that  within  the  lifetime 
of  a  child  born  today  our  present  timber  resources 
will  have  practically  vanished. 

Who  is  responsible  for  this  condition?  Is  it  the 
lumbermen?  Indirectly,  yes,  but  fundamentally,  no. 
The  lumbermen  have  been  repeatedly  assured  that 
our  forests  were  inexhaustible.  When  they  had  suc- 
cessively finished  cutting  in  New  England,  Pennsyl- 
vania, New  York,  and  Michigan,  they  were  told  to 
"Go  south,  go  west;  there  you  will  find  timber 
enough  to  last  for  untold  generations."  They  did 
so.  So  vast  did  those  forests  appear  that  their  ex- 
haustion seemed  impossible.  Today  we  are  told 
that  at  the  ordinary  rate  of  consumption  the  great 
pineries  of  Mississippi  and  Louisiana  cannot  last 
over  fifteen  years,  while  even  the  western  forests 
are  rapidly  disappearing.  It  was  all  a  colossal  mis- 
take based  purely  upon  ignorance.  In  terms  of  bil- 
lions the  mind  fails  to  function,  and  a  few  years  ago 


IMPENDING  CATASTROPHE 


93 


even  public  spirited  leaders  of  govermental  depart- 
ments were  unable  to  see  whither  our  destructive 
forest  policy  was  leading. 

Those  sections  of  our  country  from  which  the 
lumber  was  first  cut  are  already  beginning  to  feel 
the  effect.  Our  northeastern  states  are  not  now  able 
to  produce  more  than  ten  to  fifteen  per  cent  of  the 


A   large  portion  of  the  lumber  used   by  our  eastern  states  has  to  be 
hauled  clear  across  the  continent. 

wood  they  necessarily  consume.  Pennsylvania, 
which  was  but  a  short  time  ago  the  leading  state  in 
lumber  production,  now  manages  to  find  only  enough 
wood  in  its  forests  to  fill  the  needs  of  the  city  of 
Pittsburgh.  Train  loads  upon  train  loads  of  lumber 
from  the  Pacific  Coast  start  daily  across  the  conti- 
nent. Three  thousand  miles  is  the  distance  from 
which  the  New  England  States  obtain  much  of  their 
wood  supply,  and  indeed  between  one-half  and  two- 
thirds  of  the  price  of  lumber  in  most  of  our  north- 
eastern district  goes  not  to  the  producer  but  to  the 


94  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

railroads.  It  has  been  estimated  that  the  people  of 
Connecticut  alone  thus  pay  a  freight  bill  of  over 
$3,000,000  per  annum. 

The  immediate  effect  of  this  situation  is  not,  as 
one  might  suppose,  the  elimination  of  waste,  and 
the  closer  utilization  of  the  wood  in  every  tree,  but 
quite  the  reverse.  When  the  western  lumberman 
must  obtain  his  logs  from  the  rough  mountain  fast- 
nesses, when  he  receives  for  his  product  less  than 
one-half  of  its  eastern  wholesale  value,  he  can  afford 
to  cut  only  the  best  and  most  easily  workable  trees; 
he  can  sell  at  a  profit  only  the  best  and  clearest  lum- 
ber. The  rest?  It  is  left  in  the  woods,  or  burned 
on  a  rubbish  pile  to  avoid  cluttering  up  his  yards. 
Many  of  us  have  witnessed  the  dreadful  aftermath 
of  logging  operations  in  the  west:  a  tangle  of  dis- 
carded trunks  unavoidably  knocked  over  in  the 
struggle  to  bring  out  the  good  logs  at  a  limited  cost, 
great  heaps  of  tops  and  branches  with  pillar-like 
stumps  projecting  through,  a  raging  conflagration 
set  by  some  careless  spark,  and  then  utter  desola- 
tion. 

In  Europe  the  situation  today  is  far  different.  At 
the  gates  of  nearly  every  city  and  town  on  the  conti- 
nent lie  pleasant  looking  woodlands  which,  with 
little  change  in  their  outward  appearance,  furnish  a 
permanent  source  of  wood  and  lumber  free  of  trans- 


IMPENDING  CATASTROPHE  95 

portation  charges.  Those  miniature  forests  are  not 
there  for  beauty  alone  but  as  the  basis  of  the  na- 
tion's wood  supply.  They  are  there  because  two 
hundred  years  of  practical  experience  has  proved 
that  their  maintenance  is  in  dollars  and  cents,  or 
francs  and  centimes,  a  profitable  investment.  In- 
deed, one  may  actually  find  towns  whose  inhabitants 
have  not  for  years  paid  one  cent  in  taxes  because  the 
communal  forest  revenue  has  been  sufficient  to  meet 
all  public  charges.  The  known  vagaries  of  political 
administrations  might  cast  some  doubt  upon  these 
reports  of  great  success  and  generous  profits,  but 
when  we  find  private  corporations  also  owning 
forests  and  perpetually  maintaining  them  at  a  com- 
fortable profit,  as  is  the  case  in  France,  Germany, 
Switzerland,  Norway  and  Sweden,  we  must  recog- 
nize that  the  matter  is  worth  investigating.  I  my- 
self have  never  visited  one  of  these  propositions 
without  thinking  of  our  own  clubs  and  private  pre- 
serves of  the  Adirondacks,  the  Catskills,  and  the 
White  Mountains,  and  of  the  great  potential  wealth 
that  might  some  day  be  there  developed. 

The  whole  forest  policy  of  European  nations 
rests  upon  one  basic  principle.  Every  time  they  cut 
a  tree  they  take  care  that  another  shall  grow  in  its 
place.  In  actual  practice  this  is  most  often  accom- 
plished by  the  logging  of  selected  specimens  pre- 


96  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

viously  marked  in  accordance  with  theories  and 
precepts  more  than  a  century  old.  First  just  a  few 
trees  are  removed  to  allow  the  light  to  filter  through 
the  leaf  canopy  and  permit  new  seed  to  germinate 
in  the  soil — the  "seeding  cut,"  they  call  it — then, 


The  whole   forest   policy  of  European   nations   rests  upon   one   basic 

principle.    Every  time  they  cut  a  tree  they  take  care  that  another  shall 

grow  in  its  place. 

several  years  later,  a  few  more  old  trees  to  give  the 
young  ones  a  better  chance;  and  finally  when  the 
new  forest  is  safely  established  under  the  old,  down 
come  the  remaining  mother  trees  and  it  is  only 
necessary  to  await  the  beginning  of  the  next  cycle. 


IMPENDING  CATASTROPHE  97 

Cutting  at  a  rate  commensurate  only  with  annual 
growth  is  all  very  well,  you  say,  but  here  in  America 
wood  products  are  so  implicated  in  our  daily  affairs 
and  play  so  large  a  part  in  maintaining  our  stand- 
ards of  living,  that  any  restriction  upon  the  rate  of 
consumption  would  mean  nothing  less  than  a  catas- 
trophe. There  is  just  one  alternative,  and  that  is  to 
increase  the  size  and  productivity  of  our  forests;  in 
other  words,  grow  more  trees.  That  we  have  plenty 
of  idle  land  near  our  great  wood-consuming  centers, 
land  suitable  only  for  forest  growing,  is  evident  to 
the  casual  traveler,  and  the  fact  is  being  better  em- 
phasized every  year  through  the  reports  prepared 
by  the  Federal  Forest  Service  and  the  newly  con- 
stituted forest  commissions  of  our  states.  Remem- 
ber that  81  million  acres  is  the  present  estimate  of 
denuded  and  idle  areas  alone,  and  that  there  are 
also  245  million  acres  of  very  sparsely  timbered 
land  which  is  nevertheless  capable  of  intensive  tree 
cultivation.  With  the  necessity  of  meeting  high 
freight  rates  the  immediate  adoption  of  scientific 
forestry  methods  in  the  far  west  would  very  likely 
prove  unprofitable,  but  in  our  northeastern  states 
the  problem  is  quite  different.  The  sum  now  paid 
for  transcontinental  haulage  might  far  better  be  ex- 
pended on  forest  protection  and  cultivation  right  at 
home. 


98  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

In  many  sections  efficient  fire  prevention  is  all  that 
is  needed  to  permit  a  natural  re-stocking  of  the  land, 
but  unfortunately  a  few  of  our  eastern  forests  have 
been  destroyed  by  axe  and  fire  beyond  the  possibility 
of  valuable  natural  reproduction.  In  such  cases  the 
only  alternative  is  to  start  from  the  very  beginning 
with  artificial  planting.  Can  we  overcome  this  ob- 
stacle? France,  in  her  regions  devastated  by  the 
German  army,  is  facing  a  similar  question;  Eng- 
land with  one-half  of  all  her  woodlands  cut  clean  for 
war  purposes  expects  to  re-establish  them  on  a 
better  basis  than  ever.  How  do  these  nations  hope 
to  go  through  all  the  labor  of  planting  trees  and 
through  all  the  years  of  waiting  thereafter,  and  still 
find  the  operation  profitable?  Simply  because  pub- 
lic interest  is  awakened,  because  the  people,  know- 
ing that  they  have  to  have  lumber  and  wood,  face 
their  problem  squarely  and  honestly.  They,  must 
seek  every  possible  means,  they  must  combat  every 
difficulty,  in  short  they  must  accept  the  cost  or  go 
without.  When  that  slogan  becomes  our3,  we  too 
will  eventually  succeed. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

Three-quarters  of  the  Way 

The  first  step — elimination  of  the  forest-fire  menace. 

We  cannot  afford  to  restrict  our  consumption  of 
wood.  What  is  the  alternative?  The  right  course 
— the  only  remaining  plan  to  pursue — is  to  grow- 
more  trees.  The  chief  of  all  impediments  to  forest 
growing  is  the  forest  fire.  Every  year  forest  fires 
devastate  some  eight  or  ten  million  acres  of  land. 
Incidentally,  they  destroy  enough  good  timber  to 
build  a  row  of  five-room  frame  houses  spaced  one 
hundred  feet  apart  on  both  sides  of  a  highway  from 
New  York  to  Chicago.  But  the  mere  destruction  of 
existing  trees  is  by  no  means  the  worst  feature. 
When  fires  re-occur  periodically  on  the  same  land, 
finally  even  the  soil  humus  disappears  and  every 
chance  for  natural  reproduction  is  thwarted. 

Effective  fire  protection,  according  to  a  recent  In- 
vestigation undertaken  by  our  Federal  Forest  Serv- 
ice, is  therefore  not  only  the  first  necessary  step,  but 
actually  comprises  three-quarters  of  all  that  is 
99 


100 


OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 


needed.  Keep  out  the  repeated  fires,  and  without 
further  aid  three-fourths  of  such  of  our  lands  as  at 
present  produce  very  little  timber  or  none  at  all, 
will  within  a  reasonable  period  re-establish  a  timber 


CHICAGO 


NEW      YORK 

Every  year  forest  fires  destroy  enough    good  timber  to  build  a  row  of 
five-room  frame  houses  spaced  one  hundred  feet  apart  on  both  sides  of  a 
highway  from  New  York  to  Chicago. 

crop,  not  the  most  valuable  crop  perhaps,  but  one  of 
real  economic  value.  Start  now,  and  sixty  or 
seventy  years  hence  when  our  virgin  timber  is  ex- 
hausted, those  waste  acres  will  be  producing  at  least 


THREE-QUARTERS  OF  THE  WAY         101 

seventy-five  per  cent,  of  all  the  wood  necessary  to 
permanently  supply  our  needs.  No  Invective  of 
forest  fires  could  be  stronger,  no  statement  of  the 
situation  more  definite. 

Why  do  we  have  these  fires?  It  is  not  a  hard 
question  to  answer.  Occasional  conflagrations  arise 
from  lightning,  but  the  real  cause  is  the  carelessness 
of  man — the  heedless  smoker  and  the  greenhorn 
camper.  Then,  too,  our  people  have  never  quite 
outgrown  the  old  conception  of  the  forest  as  an  ob- 
stacle in  the  path  of  civilization,  an  obstacle  which 
must  be  destroyed  to  clear  the  land  for  good  crops 
and  cattle  grazing.  For  all  that  has  been  said  and 
written  on  the  subject,  there  are  stockmen  and 
farmers  who  still  hold  this  belief,  and  there  are 
others,  who,  when  burning  the  weeds  and  long  grass 
on  their  own  lands,  care  little  whether  the  flames 
spread  to  adjoining  woods.  There  are  forest  fire- 
bugs just  like  those  who  occasionally  crop  out  in  our 
cities  and  towns  and  set  many  a  destructive  blaze  be- 
fore the  place  becomes  figuratively  too  hot  for 
them;  and  there  are  enemies  of  the  timber  owners 
and  the  government  who  set  fire  to  privately  owned 
or  public  land  merely  out  of  spite  or  some  feeling 
of  injustice  because  rights  which  they  have  pre- 
viously enjoyed  have  been  terminated. 

It  is  not  easy  to  catch  the  careless  camper  who 


102  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

destroys  millions  of  dollars  worth  of  property 
through  failure  to  extinguish  his  glowing  embers, 
and  it  is  often  even  more  difficult  to  catch  the  expert 
firebug.  To  run  down  and  make  an  example  of  all 
such  offenders  would  require  the  services  of  more 
than  one  Sherlock  Holmes,  but  occasionally  our  own 
forest  rangers  have  discovered  in  the  ashes  of  a 
ruined  forest  so  minute  a  clue  as  a  burning-glass,  set 
to  kindle  the  fire  when  the  responsible  party  was 


What  forest  fires  cost.  The  left  hand  pile  of  money  represents  the 
value  of  timber  and  property  destroyed  in  the  last  five  years  by  forest 
fires.  The  second  pile  represents  the  profits  which  might  be  made  in  a 
single  year  by  various  interests  concerned  in  building  and  construction 
if  the  wood  now  consumed  by  forest  fires  could  be  saved  and  put  into 
houses.  The  third  pile  represents  what  bankers  and  real  estate  men  lose 
every  year  as  the  indirect  result  of  forest  fire  destruction. 

far  away;  and  on  that  clue  the  guilty  person  has 
been  convicted.  The  scouts  and  Indians  of  our 
childhood  delight  could  recognize  a  moccasin  print 
In  the  sand  and  follow  the  owner  to  his  death.  It 
may  be  less  romantic  to  be  able  to  trace  the  print  of 
a  patch  on  an  automobile  tire,  but  it  has  been  done, 
and  more  of  just  such  detective  work  Is  needed. 


THREE-QUARTERS  OF  THE  WAY         103 

You  cannot  fight  a  forest  fire  like  a  fire  in  a  city 
block.  There  is  no  chain  of  permanent  roads  and 
water  hydrants  to  act  as  the  goal  of  a  flying  fire 
engine.  There  is  little  anyone  can  do  with  a  fire 
once  under  good  headway,  except  perhaps  to  clear  a 
protective  strip  by  pick  and  shovel,  or,  taking  fire's 
own  weapons,  to  burn  in  advance  of  its  path  and 
confine  it  to  hastily  proscribed  limits.  Such  an 
operation,  moreover,  requires  not  only  eflicient 
leadership  and  quick  thinking,  but  an  emergency 
force  of  hundreds  of  men. 

Prevention  is  the  cheapest  form  of  cure.  If  a  fire 
is  discovered  before  it  gains  headway  a  compar- 
atively small  gang  can  often  extinguish  it  by  beating 
or  by  smothering  with  sand  and  earth.  Forest  pro- 
tection, therefore,  requires  chiefly  a  highly  organ- 
ized system  of  continuous  watching  to  observe  the 
first  tiny  trace  of  smoke.  For  this  purpose  the 
United  States  Forest  Service  and  several  of  our 
state  forestry  departments  have  developed  a  system 
of  mountain  observation  posts  or  specially  built 
watch  towers  where  a  guard  or  lookout  is  contin- 
ually on  duty.  Aerial  observation  by  planes 
equipped  with  wireless  outfits  or  with  parachutes 
for  dropping  messages  has  also  been  valuable,  par- 
ticularly as  regards  the  more  distant  and  less  acces- 
sible regions  where   permanent  posts   have  not   as 


104 


OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 


yet  been  established.  But  although  an  airplane 
travels  rapidly  and  covers  great  distances,  it  can 
sustain  flight  for  only  a  few  hours,  and  is  therefore 
less  effective  than  a  permanent  look-out.  A  few 
airplane  manufacturers  have  attempted  to  develop 


Aerial  forest  patrol  is  a  valuable  weapon  against  the  forest  fire  demon. 

for  use  in  fire  fighting  a  special  machine  large  enough 
to  carry  to  the  scene  several  men  and  their  appar- 
atus. Occasional  tests  have  shown  that  these  planes 
are  useful  in  lake  or  water  covered  regions  where 
good  landing  places  are  available,  but  many  inland 
forests  offer  no  such  advantage. 


THREE-QUARTERS  OF  THE  WAY  105 

"If  everyone  would  protect  his  own  lands,  it 
would  be  a  simple  matter,"  you  say,  and  so  it  would. 
But  who  is  to  require  this  and  how?  If  I  install  a 
system  of  observation  posts  and  fire  fighting  ar- 
rangements for  my  own  property,  and  my  neighbor 
does  not,  what  is  to  prevent  a  fire  from  gaining 
headway  on  his  lands  and,  in  spite  of  all  my  efforts, 
overwhelming  mine?  Community  fire  protection 
long  ago  became  the  accepted  duty  of  the  local  gov- 
ernment, but  since  forests  grow  without  relation  to 
political  boundaries,  the  responsibility  must  go 
higher. 

The  United  States  Government  attempts  to  pro- 
tect such  forests  as  are  under  its  direct  control,  and 
under  a  provision  of  the  so-called  Weeks  Act  of 
1911,  it  also  gives  monetary  aid  in  forest  fire  pro- 
tection to  those  states  which,  through  a  promise  to 
expend  an  equal  amount  of  their  own  money  show  a 
willingness  to  cooperate.  The  law  is  a  step  in  the 
right  direction,  but  its  successful  operation  depends 
upon  annual  appropriations  from  Congress,  and 
these  have  been  thoroughly  inadequate  to  carry  on 
the  work.  In  1921  the  Federal  Forest  Service  esti- 
mated the  cost  of  adequate  cooperation  in  fire  pro- 
tection as  about  $8,000,000  but,  realizing  that  econ- 
omy was  necessary,  asked  for  an  appropriation  of 
only  one  million.     Congress  cut  down  that  sum  to 


106 


OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 


$400,000 — one-twentieth     of     the     amount     really 
needed. 

Many  of  our  states  have  seriously  tried  to  cope 
with  the  forest  fire  problem,  but  it  is  not  an  easy 
one.  Should  all  the  people  pay  taxes  to  protect 
forests  belonging  to  a  few  private  individuals  ?  How 


The  successful  operation   of  federal   forest   protection   depends   upon 
appropriations  from  Congress,  and  these  have  been  thoroughly  inade- 
quate to  carry  on  the  work. 

far  can  a  government  go  in  forcing  individuals  to 
protect  their  own  property,  and  how  can  the  latter 
plan  be  enforced  without  an  expensive  system  of 
supervision  which  in  itself  practically  amounts  to 
state  protection?    These    are   the   questions   to  be 


THREE-QUARTERS  OF  THE  WAY  107 

answered.  Many  of  these  objections  are  best  over- 
come through  voluntary  cooperation  between  the 
government  authorities  and  private  owners  or 
owners'  associations.  Each  puts  up  part  of  the  cost 
and  the  work  is  divided.  In  California,  Washing- 
ton and  Oregon  the  lumbermen  are  subscribing  an- 
nually from  their  own  pockets  close  to  a  million 
dollars  and  handing  over  the  money  to  government 
officials  for  fire  protection  work.  In  such  eastern 
states  as  New  York  and  Pennsylvania,  where  the 
very  acuteness  of  a  timber  shortage  has  led  to  an 
appreciation  of  the  paramount  importance  of  pro- 
tecting the  few  trees  that  remain,  a  similar  spirit  of 
cooperation  has  been  manifest. 

Prohibition  Is  difficult  to  enforce  because  a  con- 
siderable portion  of  the  public  does  not  want  it. 
Only  when  the  public  wants  forest  fire  protection 
will  it  be  thoroughly  effective.  The  best  protective 
measures,  therefore,  will  come  not  as  complicated 
and  unenforclble  legislation  imposed  from  above, 
but,  originating  In  the  small  communities,  will  be 
passed  on  to  the  state,  and  from  the  state  to  the  na- 
tional government.  The  crux  of  the  whole  matter 
lies  in  education,  In  bringing  the  people  to  under- 
stand what  the  continuance  of  the  country's  lumber 
and  wood  supply  means  to  each  and  everyone  of 
them;  in  teaching  the  farmer  the  value  of  his  own 


108  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

wood  crop,  and  in  explaining  to  the  city  man  that, 
because  at  least  one-half  of  all  the  wood  consumed 
is  absolutely  necessary  to  the  production  and  de- 
livery of  the  food  which  he  eats,  he  too  is  vitally 
affected.  Sweden  has  great  timber  resources,  yet 
her  fire  losses  are  very  small.  There,  every  school 
teacher  takes  his  pupils  into  the  forest  near  the 
town  and  shows  them  how  important  the  trees  are, 
such  lessons  being  considered  as  essential  to  the 
children's  education  as  reading,  writing  and  arith- 
metic. 

A  tobacco  firm  in  Canada  recently  adopted  the 
novel  plan  of  making  each  package  of  cigarettes 
preach  a  sermon  against  carelessness.  Neatly 
tucked  away  in  the  contents  is  a  small  slip  on  which 
these  words  are  printed:  "Please  don't  throw  away 
a  lighted  cigarette.  See  that  it  is  dead  out.  Lighted 
tobacco  and  matches  are  especially  destructive  in 
the  forests.  Living  forests  mean  liberal  employ- 
ment; dead  forests  employ  nobody.  Don't  be  re- 
sponsible for  a  dead  forest."  On  our  own  side  of 
the  line  the  motion  picture  industry  has  recently  en- 
listed in  behalf  of  forest  fire  prevention.  Its  man- 
agers are  now  said  to  be  planning  a  campaign 
throughout  the  country  showing  the  destructiveness 
of  forest  fires,  their  effect  upon  the  welfare  of  each 
and  every  individual  and  what  each  person  can  do 


THREE-QUARTERS  OF  THE  WAY  109 

to  help  prevent  them.  If  this  plan  Is  carried  out,  it 
will  be  one  of  the  greatest  contributions  toward 
forest  conservation  ever  made.  In  1921  President 
Harding  instituted  by  proclamation  Forest  Protec- 
tion Week,  a  step  which  did  much  to  awaken  public 
interest.  In  nineteen  states  local  proclamations 
were  issued  by  the  governors  and  a  large  amount  of 
space  was  given  by  the  daily  press.  Yet,  in  all,  this 
effort  is  only  a  drop  in  the  bucket,  and  soon  for- 
gotten. 

There  are  millions  of  people  in  our  country  who 
know  nothing  of  its  timber  resources  other  than  that 
there  is  a  lumber  yard  around  the  corner;  they  care 
less.  The  high  prices  and  scarcity  of  building  ma- 
terials, paper,  etc.,  is  a  mystery  to  them,  and  the 
fact  that  forests  enter  into  the  daily  cost  of  living 
and  form  an  essential  part  of  the  industrial  pros- 
perity of  the  nation  means  nothing.  How  to  edu- 
cate the  people  to  the  importance  of  all  this  is  one 
of  the  biggest  problems  of  today.  Until  forest  pro- 
tection is  a  matter  of  conversation  at  the  office,  in 
the  club  and  In  the  home,  there  can  be  no  definite 
assurance  for  the  future. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

The  Government  Leads 

National  and  state  owned  forests  in  the  United 
States ;  why  this  policy  should  be  extended ;  the 
government  and  forest  education. 

Leadership  in  all  matters  so  closely  affecting  the 
welfare  of  every  citizen  must  naturally  devolve  upon 
some  centralized  authority,  and  indeed,  as  regards 
the  maintenance  of  adequate  supplies  of  forest 
products,  many  people  feel  that  federal  or  state 
action  offers  the  sole  remedy:  first,  because  the 
government,  being  a  continuing  entity,  can  alone 
afford  to  hold  land  long  enough  to  await  the  second 
growth  timber  crop;  and  secondly,  because  lands 
thus  held  may  be  protected  from  fire  without  en- 
countering the  much  mooted  question  of  conflicting 
authority.  At  the  very  least  our  National  Forests 
should  be  of  sufficient  size  to  prove  a  real  factor  In 
the  future  wood  supply,  and  widely  enough  extended 
to  establish  for  each  district  the  most  effective 
methods  of  promoting  forest  growth.     Neverthe- 

110 


THE  GOVERNMENT  LEADS 


111 


less,  democratic  government  progresses  no  further 
in  any  given  line  than  public  opinion  demands,  and 
if  its  representatives  as  yet  have  no  definite  solution 
to  offer,  then  we  ourselves  are  chiefly  to  blame. 

Many  years  ago  all  the  land  outside  the  thirteen 
original  states  belonged  to  the  federal  government. 


1  --m^m 

^ 

^  4> 

(1  w     /  / 

^K- 

T^M 

\\\:l^mr^ 

::Ll^^ 

& 

\yr\\ 

c=>--     M 

•^ 

The    National    Forests  of    the   United     States.       The    shaded   areas 

represent  forest  lands  now  owned  and  controlled  by  the  United  States 

Department  of  Agriculture. 

Timbered  areas  at  that  time  possessed  no  more 
value  than  those  unforested,  and  were  in  fact,  for 
the  purposes  of  permanent  occupation,  considerably 
less  desirable  than  agricultural  lands.  If  anyone 
could  have  foreseen  the  present  situation  our  gov- 


112  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

ernment  might  have  taken  some  steps  to  classify 
land  before  making  sales,  and  would  probably  have 
reserved  much  of  the  forest  area.  This  was  in  fact 
the  policy  subsequently  pursued  in  Canada,  where 
the  chief  forests  are  still  owned  today  by  the  provin- 
cial governments,  and  the  sale  of  lumbering  rights 
not  only  constitutes  an  important  source  of  public 
income,  but  simplifies  the  whole  problem  of  protec- 
tion and  conservation.  The  policy  pursued  in  the 
United  States,  however,  was  in  accord  with  the  best 
understood  theories  of  developing  the  country  by 
allowing  its  citizens  to  avail  themselves  of  the  rich- 
ness of  her  natural  resources,  and  indeed  private 
exploitation  thus  encouraged  was  undoubtedly  re- 
sponsible for  the  virile  and  rapid  growth  of  the  west. 
It  was  not  until  about  twenty  years  ago,  when 
there  remained  in  the  public  domain  only  a  limited 
forest  area,  that  there  arose  any  wide  agitation  for 
protecting  our  natural  resources,  and  the  word  "con- 
servation" came  into  use.  To  be  sure,  the  first  Na- 
tional Forests  were  set  apart  in  1891  by  withdraw- 
ing the  land  from  sale,  but  this  policy  was  not  then 
understood  and  for  the  first  twenty  years  constant 
efforts  were  made  in  Congress  to  do  away  with  it. 
That  feeling  gradually  passed  away,  and,  as  river 
navigation  and  water  power  development  were  much 
talked  of,  it  was  felt  to  be  essential  that  the  forests 


THE  GOVERNMENT  LEADS  113 

on  the  watersheds  of  navigable  rivers  should  be 
permanently  controlled  for  the  sake  of  flood  pre- 
vention. The  man  who  talked  of  saving  the  timber 
for  the  wood  itself,  however,  obtained  small  cre- 
dence and  a  limited  audience.  In  1911  Representa- 
tive John  W.  Weeks,  later  Secretary  of  War,  intro- 
duced  and  persuaded   Congress   to   pass   the   law 

HmmHmmmmm 

Total  Fb/xs7;5  or  mt  (/Af/rsoCMrC'S. 


POBUa.Y  OWA/£^ff/W£SrS. 

Only  about  seventeen  per  cent  ofthe  forest  land  of  the  United  States 
is  publicly  owned. 

which  bears  his  name.  Under  It  the  United  States 
government  adopted  the  policy  of  cooperation  in 
fire  protection  above  mentioned  and  strengthened 
its  policy  of  permanent  forest 'ownership  through  a 
plan  to  buy  some  five  million  acres  in  the  eastern 
states.  In  ten  years  something  over  two  million 
acres  have  thus  been  purchased,  and  this  property 
as  a  whole  is  now  estimated  as  worth  sixty  per  cent, 
more  than  it  originally  cost,  while  the  sale  of  tim- 


.114  OUR  VAxNISHING   FORESTS 

ber  thereon,  under  methods  which  have  constantly 
tended  to  increase  rather  than  decrease  the  forest 
productivity,  has  yielded  a  substantial  income. 
Nevertheless,  the  program  has  fallen  far  behind 
and  today  only  about  seventeen  per  cent,  of  the 
forest  land  of  the  United  States  is  publicly  owned. 
Moreover,  since  much  of  this  area  is  at  present  com- 
mercially inaccessible  and  still  other  portions  have 
only  a  thin  forest  cover,  not  over  five  per  cent  of  the 
lumber  on  the  market  today  comes  from  national  or 
state  forests. 

Politics  and  false  economy  have  been  the  greatest 
obstacles  encountered.  Congressmen  still  find  it 
easier  to  vote  many  thousands  for  distribution  of 
free  garden  seeds  among  their  constituents  than  to 
give  them  back  the  forests  which  they  need.  The 
five  million  acres  contemplated  by  the  original  plan 
were  located  in  about  ten  different  eastern  states 
from  Maine  to  Georgia,  and  these  commonwealths, 
through  the  passage  of  legislation  necessary  to 
enable  the  federal  government  to  purchase  land 
within  their  boundaries,  have  already  shown  an 
eagerness  to  cooperate.  There  are  now  very  con- 
siderable additional  areas,  both  in  the  White 
Mountains  and  In  the  Appalachians,  which  have 
been  approved  by  the  government  engineers,  and, 
due  to  business  depression,  these  lands  have  been 


THE  GOVERNMENT  LEADS  115 

available  for  purchase  at  prices  considerably  below 
the  established  average.  Although  many  of  our 
national  forest  officials  believe  that  It  would  be 
better  to  strain  the  public  purse  now,  rather  than  to 
be  obliged  to  pay  double  the  price  at  a  later  date, 
Congress  still  hesitates.  It  Is  very  interesting  to 
note  that  a  comprehensive  forest  growing  policy 
adopted  by  England  in  1919  almost  ran  on  the 
rocks  because  of  a  similar  desire  to  economize.  In 
that  particular  case,  however,  the  demand  of  the 
unemployed  that  the  government  should  undertake 
public  works  resulted  In  an  ultimate  reversal  of  the 
decision,  and  a  large  part  of  a  special  appropriation 
was  then  devoted  to  forest  growing.  It  all  depends 
upon  this  one  point;  are  we  sufficiently  anxious  to 
ensure  a  future  wood  supply,  to  be  willing  to 
demand  and  pay  for  it? 

When  Congress  does  decide  to  continue  its  sup- 
port of  the  Weeks  Law  policy  and  the  money  is 
forthcoming,  two  things  should  be  done.  First,  the 
eastern  program  should  be  completed,  and  then  the 
middle  west  and  south  certainly  should  receive 
attention.  Some  of  our  central  states  such  as  Iowa 
fortunately  or  unfortunately  possess  almost  no 
poor  land,  and  the  yield  from  agricultural  products 
is  much  higher  than  could  be  obtained  from  timber 
growing.     Iowa,   however,  could  get  wood   from 


116  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

Minnesota  and  Wisconsin  if  the  once  extensive 
forests  of  those  states  could  be  re-established.  It 
is  probable  also  that  the  United  States  Government 
should  acquire  lands  in  Indiana,  Illinois,  Michigan, 
Kentucky  and  other  states.  The  state  of  Michigan 
alone  has  today  ten  million  acres  of  idle  land,  which 
in  time  could  be  brought  into  a  state  of  effective 
productivity.  Even  with  tliese  additions,  however, 
the  government  timber  crop  would  still  be  very  far 
from  supplying  all  our  needs. 

Under  the  American  Constitution  the  authority 
of  the  national  government  to  acquire  land  is  not 
absolute.  The  Weeks  Law  was  hung  upon  a  pro- 
vision authorizing  the  protection  of  navigable 
rivers.  A  fair  and  proper  distribution  of  the 
national  forests  through  the  central  states,  however, 
would  demand  the  purchase  of  land  not  strictly 
within  watershed  areas,  and  a  search  will  have  to  be 
made  to  legally  justify  the  necessary  legislation 
upon  some  other  grounds.  The  time  has  certainly 
arrived  when  the  preservation  of  cheap  building 
materials  and  the  insurance  of  a  future  supply  is 
quite  as  much  in  the  public  interest  as  is  the  main- 
tenance of  river  navigation. 

The  example  of  the  federal  government  in  acquir- 
ing and  operating  forest  land  has  been  followed  by 
a  number  of  states.     Pennsylvania  and  New  York 


THE  GOVERNMENT  LEADS  117 

undoubtedly  lead,  but  New  York  state  Is  handi- 
capped by  a  constitutional  provision  which  prevents 
the  proper  utilization  of  its  great  Adirondack  Park. 
A  very  large  portion  of  Pennsylvania,  which  was 
once  heavily  timbered,  is  unsuited  for  agriculture 
or  for  any  purpose  other  than  forest  growing  and 
is  now  largely  a  desolate  waste.  The  last  forest 
appropriation  in  that  state  called  for  two  million 
eight  hundred  and  seventy  thousand  dollars,  one 
million  of  which  was  for  forest  fire  protection  alone. 
Pennsylvania  has  acquired  title  in  its  own  right  to 
over  a  million  acres  of  land,  but  in  sixteen  years 
has  succeeded  in  planting  only  about  one-fiftieth  of 
this  amount,  while  lumbering  of  the  remaining 
privately  owned  forests  has  progressed  at  a  rate  to 
more  than  counterbalance.  The  state  nurseries, 
however,  give  away  several  million  seedlings  every 
year  for  planting  by  private  owners,  boy  scouts  and 
other  organizations,  and  numerous  private  planta- 
tions have  resulted. 

The  methods  of  forest  ownership  and  control 
vary  widely  in  the  different  states.  In  North  Caro- 
lina, for  instance,  forestry  work  is  under  the 
direction  of  the  state  geological  and  economic  sur- 
vey, the  state  forester  being  a  sub-official  thereof. 
That  state  has  undertaken  an  official  survey  of  its 
remaining  timber  resources  with  a  view  to  establish- 


118 


OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 


Ing  a  plan  for  future  action.  Having  still  a 
considerable  area  of  good  forest,  the  problem  is 
there  largely  one  of  keeping  out  the  fire  and  allow- 
ing the  pine  and  other  woods  to  naturally  reforest 
themselves.  Although  New  Hampshire  and  Ver- 
mont are  generally  recognized  as  timber  producing 


Lumber  from 

PUBLICLY  OWNED 
F0RE5r5 


Not  over  five  per  cent  of  the  lumber  on  the  market  today  comes 
from  national  or  state  forests. 

States,  it  is  a  less  generally  appreciated  fact  that 
over  one-half  the  area  of  Massachusetts  and 
Connecticut  is  also  more  suitable  for  growing 
timber  than  for  any  other  crop.  Yet  today  the 
railroad  trains  In  all  the  New  England  states  are 
running  over  ties  brought  from  the  Pacific  Coast, 
and  every  wood-user  is  paying  about  twice  as  much 


THE  GOVERNMENT  LEADS  119 

as  he  would  if  the  timber  were  grown  at  home. 
The  State  of  Massachusetts  owns  about  thirty-five 
thousand  acres  of  forest  and  has  recently  adopted  a 
plan  of  buying  and  planting  a  total  of  one  hundred 
thousand  acres  of  state  forest.  The  significant  fact 
is  that  this  act  grew  out  of  an  "Initiative"  proposal 
signed  by  31,000  registered  voters.  Massachusetts 
also  spends  a  fair  sum  of  money  for  fire  protection 
and,  further,  in  common  with  Pennsylvania,  New 
York,  Connect/cut  and  other  commonwealths, 
attempts  to  emourage  reforestation  by  private 
owners  through  a  plan  for  reduced  taxation  on 
lands  set  aside  for  the  production  of  a  new  wood 
crop. 

New  Jersey  obtains  a  result  just  as  effective  as 
under  state  ownership,  through  a  plan  for  state 
care  and  scientific  operation  of  some  privately 
owned  forest  land.  This  state  has  also  put  into 
effect  a  law  which  requires  the  teaching  of  forest 
fire  prevention  in  the  public  schools.  Tennessee, 
California,  Rhode  Island,  and  West  Virginia  have 
recently  followed  suit. 

The  middle  western  states  have  been  slower  to 
grasp  the  situation,  but  are  now  also  beginning  to 
show  interest.  The  State  of  Wisconsin  now  owns 
about  300,000  acres  of  forest  land,  is  protecting 
it  from  fire  and  doing  some  planting.     Illinois  has 


120  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

been  making  a  careful  soil  survey  covering  more 
than  two-thirds  of  the  counties  in  the  state,  and 
that  survey  indicates  that  five  or  six  million  acres, 
being  unsuitable  for  agriculture,  will  have  to  be 
used  for  tree  growing  or  allowed  to  lie  idle.  It  is 
probable  that  some  real  forest  program  will  soon  be 
presented  to  the  state  legislature.  Indiana  is  in  a 
similar  condition,  and  has  already  acquired  a  little 
over  three  thousand  acres  in  the  southern  portion 
of  the  state,  where  an  experimental  station  has 
been  established.  Even  as  far  west  as  the  Pacific 
Coast,  where  virgin  timber  is  still  abundant,  the 
movement  has  been  felt  and  the  State  of  Washing- 
ton has  already  formed  the  nucleus  for  a  public 
forest. 

Whole  volumes  might  be  written  upon  the 
gradual  development  of  state  policies  along  this 
line.  There  is  no  particular  advantage  to  be  claimed 
for  state  forest  ownership  over  federal  ownership 
or  vice-versa,  such  efl^iciency  and  consistency  of  pur- 
pose as  has  hitherto  been  shown  by  the  federal 
government  being  offset  in  a  measure  by  the  fact 
that  state  action  usually  engenders  greater  local 
interest  and  a  better  spirit  of  cooperation  among 
the  people.  Just  as  the  centralization  of  authority 
in  Congress  versus  states  rights  has  been  an  unend- 
ing struggle   since   the   American   constitution  was 


THE  GOVERNMENT  LEADS  121 

first  framed,  there  are  and  probably  always  will  be 
protagonists  of  either  system. 

Whether  it  be  federal  government  or  state,  how- 
ever, this  problem  comes  so  close  to  every  man, 
woman  and  child  in  the  country  that  some  sort  of 
public  leadership  is  absolutely  essential.  We  may 
not  have  been  originally  successful  in  government 
management  of  large  business  affairs,  but  we  do  at 
least  look  to  the  government  for  an  example  in 
matters  of  overwhelming  public  interest,  and  we 
do  demand  that  it  shall  direct  education  along  the 
necessary  lines. 


CHAPTER  XV 

Wood  Lots  and  Wood  Crops 

The  farmer's  wood-lot  as  a  key  to  the  situation; 
extent  of  such  wood-lots  and  their  possible  producing 
capacity;  trees  rightly  regarded  as  an  agricultural 
crop. 

The  government  must  lead,  yes,  but  who  will 
follow?  It  is  now  evident  that  wood  is  not  a  raw 
material  like  iron  ore  and  oil,  but  a  growing  crop 
similar,  except  in  the  time  that  it  takes  to  reach 
maturity,  to  any  agricultural  product.  Among  the 
well  known  foresters  of  the  country  not  one  has  as 
yet  practised  his  own  preachings,  gone  in  for 
raising  timber  and  made  money.  The  farmer  does 
not  call  himself  a  forester  but  it  is  chiefly  he  who 
has  profited  by  what  forestry  tries  to  teach,  and  if 
there  is  one  place  where  we  may  look  for  practical 
proof  of  profitable  wood  growing  it  Is  in  our  pro- 
gressive agricultural  regions. 

This  is  especially  true  in  the  east  where  the 
market  is  near  at  hand  and  almost  the  only  compe- 
tition  comes   from   Pacific   Coast  lumber  with  its 

122 


WOOD  LOTS  AND  WOOD  CROPS        123 

heavy  transportation  costs.  The  United  States 
Forest  Service  tells  the  story  of  one  farmer  in  New 
Hampshire  who  owned  a  strip  of  practically  worth- 
less sidehill.  Forty-five  years  ago  he  set  out  four- 
teen hundred  pine  seedlings  obtained  from  a  nearby 
thicket.  The  three  acres  thus  planted  were  recently 
sold  to  a  lumber  company  for  something  over 
$1,000.  Assuming  an  ordinary  land  value  of  five 
dollars  an  acre,  and  a  charge  for  taxes  and  over- 
sight for  the  period  averaging  two  dollars  per  acre 
a  year,  the  operation  has  yielded  a  return  of  five 
per  cent,  on  the  total  investment  in  land,  labor  and 
annual  outlay,  and  in  addition  a  sum  equivalent  to  a 
yearly  net  profit  from  the  start  of  over  five  dollars 
per  acre. 

No  one  better  than  the  farmer  understands  the 
necessity  of  making  the  soil  produce  the  maximum 
of  income.  There  are  comparatively  few  farms, 
however,  where  all  the  soil  is  suitable  for  food 
crops.  American  pioneers  had  no  soil  survey  and 
no  handbook  of  land  economics  to  tell  them  that  a 
farm  cleared  from  the  woods  back  on  the  hill  would 
not  give  them  a  living;  but  occasionally  some  men 
went  in  and  cut  down  the  trees,  tried  to  make  a 
living  and  failed.  Then,  when  several  generations 
later  the  forest  cover  again  grew  up,  the  land  began 
for  the  first  time  to  pay.     Fortunately,  however. 


124 


OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 


most  of  the  rocky  and  unpromising  places  were 
untouched,  and  it  is  these  which  constitute  the  large 
majority  of  the  farm  wood-lots  of  today. 

There  are  thousands  of  just  such  wood-lots  in 
every  section  of  the  country,  but  it  has  only  been 
within   recent   years    that    anyone    has    taken    the 


The  aggregate  of  all  the  farmers'  wood-lots  in  the  country  was  in  1915 
no  less  than  two  hundred  million  acres.    This  represents  an  area  as  large 
as  the  whole  of  the  New  England  states,  New  York,  New  Jersey,  Penn- 
sylvania, Ohio,  Indiana  and  IlHnois. 

trouble  to  consider  them.  The  Forest  Service  now 
tells  us  that  sixty  per  cent,  of  all  the  forests  in,  the 
country  will  soon  belong,  not  to  the  government, 
nor  to  the  states,  nor  to  the  lumbermen,  but  to  the 
agricultural  element  in  our  population.  In  1915  the 
aggregate  of  such  holdings  was  no  less  than  two 
hundred  million   acres,    or   something   over   three 


WOOD  LOTS  AND  WOOD  CROPS        125 

hundred  thousand  square  miles.  This  is  equivalent 
to  an  area  of  continuous  forest  as  large  as  the  whole 
of  the  New  England  states,  New  York,  New  Jersey, 
Pennsylvania,  Ohio,  Indiana  and  Illinois.  In  the 
south  there  are  still  large  areas  of  so-called  farm 
wood-lots  growing  on  good  soil  which  will  eventu- 
ally be  diverted  to  food  growing,  but  on  the  other 
hand  statistics  for  the  New  England  States  show 
that  every  year  several  thousand  acres,  which  are 
no  longer  sufficiently  productive  for  general  farming 
purposes,  are  reverting  to  forests  and  being  more 
profitably  worked  for  the  wood  crop  than  previously 
for  food.  There  one  may  find  today  men  who  make 
more  money  out  of  the  annual  wood  crop  than  they 
do  out  of  the  rest  of  the  farm,  and  still  others  who 
just  manage  to  break  even  on  dairying  or  food 
raising  but  make  their  real  livelihood  from  the  sale 
of  wood.  American  farm  wood-lots  are  today  far 
from  reaching  a  maximum  of  productivity,  as  only 
here  and  there  has  mere  chance  taught  the  profit- 
ability of  effective  forest  cultivation,  but  it  is  no 
dreamer's  theory  to  estimate  that,  without  In  one 
whit  impairing  their  forest  capital,  the  farmers  of 
the  country  could  supply  every  year  approximately 
one-fifth  of  all  our  wood  needs ! 

The  forest  crop,  like  any  other,  has  its  seasons  of 
sowing,  cultivating  and  harvest,  but  those  seasons 


126 


OUR  VANISHING    FORESTS 


may  come  together  and,  generally  speaking,  any  of 
the  work  can  be  carried  on  in  spare  time;  indeed,  the 
exploitation  of  a  wood-lot  can  often  best  be  con- 
ducted in  winter  when  the  farmer  has  no  other 
work  for  his  teams  or  for  himself  and  his  hired 


■  •*■  I  WWH   THE  BEST  OF       ] 

THiS  M6RC-   FMM   V/OUUO 
—  PAY  Ai     wtl-i-    AS 
_  VtMe  01.0  WOOD   UOT-- 


In  the  New  England  States  we  find  today  men  who  make  more  money 
out  of  the  annual  wood  crop  than  they  do  out  of  the  rest  of  the  farm. 

help.  When,  therefore,  he  has  learned  that  even 
the  poor  wood-lot  can  supply  him  with  winter  fuel 
and  a  little  profit  besides,  he  often  thinks  of 
extending  it.  There  are  several  ways  to  begin. 
Some  species  of  trees  may  be  propagated  by  the 
sowing  of  seed  directly  on  the  land  in  little  holes  or 


WOOD  LOTS  AND  WOOD  CROPS        127 

roughly  ploughed  furrows.  For  others,  the  seed 
has  to  be  sown  in  nursery  beds  and  the  resultant 
young  plants  later  set  out,  while  for  others  again, 
such  as  willows  and  poplar,  young  green  cutting  are 
simply  thrust  into  the  ground  and  left  to  grow.  The 
reading  of  some  forest  primers  would  seem  to 
indicate  that  these  were  complicated  processes,  but 
to  the  farmers  they  are  merely  the  adaptation  of 
ordinary  agricultural  methods.  Grain  is  sown, 
tomatoes,  onions  and  the  like  are  set  out  in  the 
form  of  little  seedlings  previously  started  in  a  hot 
bed,  and  other  plants,  such  as  berries,  are  propa- 
gated from  green  shoots.  For  the  past  few  years 
prudent  grangers  in  Vermont  have  been  setting  out 
an  average  of  four  or  five  hundred  thousand  forest 
seedlings  each  spring,  and  reports  show  that  at 
least  eighty  per  cent,  of  these  youngsters  are 
developing  into  sturdy  trees. 

After  the  wood-lot  is  once  started  cultivation  may 
be  naturally  regulated  by  the  density  of  the  leaf 
canopy,  thus  keeping  down  the  weeds  and  permitting 
the  formation  of  humus  from  rotting  leaves,  twigs 
and  branches.  Under  such  a  plan  the  forest  will 
ordinarily  reproduce  itself  indefinitely.  If  weeds 
are  particularly  persistent,  as  is  often  the  case  in 
the  open  form  of  growth  required  for  developing 
large  crowns  on  sugar  maples,  limited  grazing  of 


128  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

cattle  is  helpful,  but  during  the  early  stages  the 
entry  of  any  animals  which  may  feed  upon  the 
young  seedlings  or  trample  them  down  must  be 
prevented.  Where  the  soil  is  very  hard,  however, 
the  re-establishment  of  a  forest  often  requires  a 
tilling  of  the  soil  similar  to  that  necessary  for  any 
other  crop.  On  the  shores  of  the  Chesapeake  some 
potato  raisers  turn  this  to  their  own  advantage. 
The  farmer  selects  a  location  where  pines  have 
been  growing,  carefully  plows  under  the  needles  and 
litter  as  a  fertilizer,  and  from  this  soil  obtains 
several  crops  of  sweet  potatoes.  He  then  seeds  the 
land  to  pines  once  more,  and  after  a  time  repeats 
the  process.  In  Germa»ny  an  alternate  rotation  of 
vegetable  and  wood  crops  is  very  common. 

The  idea  of  operating  a  wood-lot  or  a  larger 
forest  upon  the  crop  theory  depends  solely  upon 
regarding  the  existing  forest  as  capital  and  the 
wood  production  derived  tkerefrom  as  an  interest 
or  gross  return.  The  only  way  to  increase  the  yield 
of  such  a  forest  is  to  increase  the  capital  or  change 
it  to  a  different  species.  It  is  not  always  easy  to 
determine  how  to  regulate  the  cutting  so  as  not  to 
impair  the  capital  or  undercut  the  yield,  but  the 
elementary  idea  is  simple.  Supposing  a  tree  will 
reach  the  desired  size  in  forty  years,  if  a  farmer 
plants  one  acre  of  land  every  year,  after  the  fortieth 


WOOD  LOTS  AND  WOOD  CROPS 


129 


planting  he  will  be  able  to  cut  one  acre  every  year 
and  just  keep  the  balance  even.  In  Germany  such  a 
method  is  often  carried  out  in  exact  detail,  but  in 
this  country,  where  the  ages  of  the  trees  on  a  given 


Telegraph  poles,  fence  posts,  railway  ties  and  cord  wood  represent  a  few 
of  the  products  of  the  farm  wood-lot. 

tract  of  land  are  usually  not  so  evenly  balanced  to 
begin  with,  it  becomes  a  matter  of  estimating  the 
rate  of  growth.  Simple  methods  have  been  devised 
whereby  the  volume  of  wood  on  a  given  tract  can 
be  readily  figured  from  time  to  time  as  a  check  upon 
the  operations,  and  most  successful  wood-lots  have 


130  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

been  maintained  at  about  an  average  stand  without 
a  great  deal  of  trouble. 

The  first  purpose  of  a  wood-lot  is  to  supply  cord- 
wood  and  timber  for  the  individual  use  of  the 
owner.  It  has  sometimes  been  said  that  if  one- 
eighth  of  the  average  farm  is  in  timber,  the  wood 
crop  will  just  about  take  care  of  home  needs.  Actual 
profit  then  depends  upon  an  additional  production, 
and  the  far-sighted  operator  endeavors  to  grow 
trees  of  such  kinds  and  sizes  as  will  best  accommo- 
date the  market.  It  is  usually  advisable  to  develop 
some  special  line.  For  instance,  ash  brings  its 
maximum  income  when  sold  for  tool  handles,  oak 
for  furniture  and  quarter  sawing,  tulip  poplar  for 
veneers,  black  cherry  for  furniture,  etc.  The  grow- 
ing of  fence-posts  and  poles  has  been  particularly 
profitable  as  the  saving  of  high  transportation  costs 
permits  a  good  local  market  everywhere.  Poles 
run  from  twenty  to  sixty  feet  in  length  and  upwards, 
the  smallest  top  diameter  usually  being  in  the  neigh- 
borhood of  seven  inches,  while  fence-posts  are  ordi- 
narily about  seven  feet  long.  Near  a  city  or  town 
cord-wood  often  brings  good  prices,  and,  when  sold 
as  pulpwood,  spruce,  balsam  and  some  of  the 
southern  pines  are  generally  remunerative.  In 
northern  New  England,  New  York,  Mississippi  and 
Louisiana  many  farmers  are  able  to  make  consider- 


WOOD  LOTS  AND  WOOD  CROPS         131 

able  profit  from  this  source.  Experience  has  shown 
that  hemlock  sold  for  tanning  purposes  often  brings 
more  money  than  as  lumber,  while  in  limited  areas 
beech,  birch  and  maple  may  be  sold  for  distillation 
and  charcoal  making.  Willows  for  basketry  may  be 
grown  in  one  or  two  years  after  setting  out  the 
shoots.  As  the  uses  of  wood  are  so  varied  the  list 
of  products  above  mentioned  by  no  means  covers 
the  field. 

Trees  are  useful  on  the  farm  as  wind-breaks  for 
orchards  and  other  plantations.  In  the  south  and 
particularly  in  tropical  regions  they  are  scattered 
through  the  fields  to  protect  the  crops  from  the 
mid-day  sun.  Farmers  are  also  beginning  to  appre- 
ciate the  importance  of  the  forests  because  the 
wood-using  industries  tend  to  maintain  the  local 
population.  It  was  partly  with  this  end  in  view  that 
the  Farmers'  Federation  of  the  State  of  Indiana 
recently  took  a  definite  stand  in  favor  of  providing 
a  means  for  the  revival  of  the  once  famous  hard- 
wood forests  for  which  that  state  was  noted. 
Through  government  cooperation  many  of  the 
middle  western  states  have  already  come  to  enjoy 
good  roads,  and  those  who  have  seen  the  benefits 
thus  obtained,  are  anxious  to  extend  the  federal  aid 
plan  to  include  forest  re-establishment. 

Economically  this  interest  in  wood  as  a  crop  Is 


132  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

one  of  the  most  promising  developments  of  recent 
years.  As  the  country  grows  larger  and  the  inter- 
change of  all  goods  becomes  more  complicated, 
local  production  and  local  marketing  to  reduce  the 
high  cost  of  living  assume  greater  and  greater 
importance.  In  fine,  the  farm  wood  crop  idea 
represents  in  America  our  nearest  approach  to  a 
permanent  forest  and  is  the  fundamental  theory 
behind  all  the  suggested  methods  to  insure  the  wood 
supply  of  the  future.  Change  only  the  form  of 
ownership  and  the  farm  wood-crop  becomes  the 
municipal  wood-crop,  the  town  wood-crop,  the  state 
wood-crop,  and  the  foundation  of  all  our  vast  tim- 
ber using  industries. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

Town  Forests 

Town  and  city  owned  wood-lots  in  America ; 
essentials  necessary  to  general  adoption  of  the  plan; 
forests  and  unemployment. 

If  the  sum  total  of  countless  little  wood-lots  on 
farms  is  a  potentially  important  factor  in  its  ability 
to  solve  the  shortage  of  wood  and  lumber,  why  not 
carry  the  idea  a  little  further?  If  a  wood-lot  is 
valuable  to  the  farmer  in  supplying  his  home  needs, 
why  is  it  not  doubly  valuable  to  a  settled  community 
where  there  is  an  opportunity  to  use  almost  every 
product?  Towns  and  cities  have  already  success- 
fully engaged  in  the  business  of  furnishing  water, 
gas,  electric  light  and  transportation.  In  Europe 
municipalities  also  control  their  own  wood  supply, 
and  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  or  local  Trade 
Board  uses  as  an  attraction  for  all  sorts  of  indus- 
tries the  fact  that  a  guaranteed  supply  of  wood 
products  can  be  offered.  Thousands  of  cities,  towns 
and  villages  throughout  the  United  States  already 
133 


134 


OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 


possess  vacant  land,  school  property,  poor  farms  or 
watershed  reserves,  which  could  be  put  to  work 
producing  timber  just  as  easily  as  it  is  done  across 
the  ocean.  If  it  will  benefit  the  community  to  have 
wood-working  industries,  is  it  not  better  and  surer 


The  Town  Forest  movement  is  already  gaining  headway  in  America 
Its  object  is  to  furnish  wood  products  free  of  transportation  charges 

to  offer  raw  material  which  the  community  itself 
can  control? 

The  town  forest  movement  is  already  gaining 
headway  in  America.  One  of  our  most  progressive 
states  along  this  line  is  Massachusetts,  which  has 


TOWN  FORESTS  135 

gone  so  far  as  to  enact  special  legislation  covering 
not  only  the  utilization  of  such  public  lands  as  may 
already  belong  to  the  community,  but  also  the  legal- 
ized acquisition  of  additional  areas.  The  constitu- 
tional justification  is  clear.  When  any  real  need 
cannot  be  fully  supplied  by  private  initiative,  it 
becomes  a  public  duty  to  perform  the  service.  If  an 
adequate  city  water  supply  cannot  be  properly  fur- 
nished by  private  individuals,  it  must  be  provided  by 
the  public,  even  at  a  financial  loss  on  the  operation. 
The  wood  supply  offers  no  different  problem. 
Nation  and  state  may  do  their  part,  but  the  com- 
munity takes  pride  in  its  ability  to  look  after  itself, 
and  it  will  always  do  so. 

The  city  of  Fitchburg,  Massachusetts,  claims  the 
first  officially  established  town  forest  in  the  United 
States.  During  1914  it  purchased  a  number  of 
small  wood-lots  partially  scattered,  aggregating  in 
all  about  one  hundred  acres,  the  scattering  of  the 
lots  being  in  no  way  a  disadvantage  as  the  fire  risk 
is  accordingly  decreased.  Part  of  the  land  already 
has  a  fairly  good  second  growth  of  pine,  and  the 
remainder  is  being  rapidly  planted.  Other  Massa- 
chusetts towns  which  own  forests  are  Walpole  and 
Petersham,  while  Brookline  also  uses  its  three 
hundred  and  fifty  acres  of  watershed  for  timber 
production.    Walpole  acquired  its  lands  by  gift,  and 


136 


OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 


then  set  to  work  to  plant  pine  seedlings  by  means  of 
Arbor  Day  celebrations  in  the  public  schools.  The 
Petersham  forest  was  the  outgrowth  of  a  two  hun- 
dred acre  poor  farm  whose  inmates  gradually 
decreased  to  the  point  where  the  farm  was  no  longer 


Thousands  of  cities,  towns  and  villages  throughout  the  United  States 

already  possess  vacant  land,  poor  farms,  school  property  or  watershed 

reserves  which  could  be  put  to  work  producing  timber. 

worth  continuing  in  the  original  capacity.  The 
trees  here  are  already  well  advanced  in  age,  as,  in 
the  years  that  the  poor  farm  was  neglected,  the  pine 
came  up  of  its  own  accord  and  part  of  the  forest 
had  reached  maturity  about  the  time  that  attention 


TOWN  FORESTS  137 

began  to  be  called  to  it.  The  State  Forestry  Asso- 
ciation points  to  the  fact  that  at  least  ninety  other 
towns  in  Massachusetts  own  poor  farms,  each  with 
an  average  of  eighty  to  ninety  acres  of  forest  land 
which  could  be  profitably  operated  by  the  com- 
munity. 

Massachusetts,  however,  is  not  alone  in  promul- 
gating the  town  forest  idea,  and  New  York  State 
now  has  a  large  number  of  cities  and  villages  own- 
ing forest  land,  often  with  several  hundred  acres  of 
young  forest  established  by  the  planting  of  trees. 
The  beginning  of  these  forests  dates  back  to  1908 
when  the  New  York  State  Forestry  Department 
began  to  sell  reforesting  stock,  but  it  is  only  within 
the  last  few  years  that  general  interest  has  been 
manifested  in  the  work.  Over  seventy  New  York 
cities  and  villages  are  now  carrying  on  operations 
of  this  kind.  Among  the  more  noteworthy  may  be 
mentioned  the  city  of  Gloversville  with  about  four 
hundred  acres  of  reforested  land,  Rochester  with  an 
equal  area.  Glens  Falls  with  six  hundred  acres,  and 
the  City  of  New  York  with  over  two  thousand 
acres.  While  these  forests  have  been  established 
primarily  for  the  protection  of  the  water  supply  of 
the  various  municipalities,  it  is  evident  that  the 
future  wood  yield  will  place  them  on  a  similar  basis 
with     the    municipal     and    communal     forests     of 


138  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

Europe.  Malone,  New  York,  and  numerous  other 
towns  have  established  municipal  forests  quite  aside 
from  watershed  maintenance. 

The  latest  innovation  in  the  idea  of  a  community 
forest  consists  of  a  so-called  forestry  company.  In 
such  a  corporation  anyone  is  allowed  to  purchase 
stock,  and  the  funds  are  used  for  the  purchase  and 
planting  of  abandoned  farm  lands.  The  first  com- 
pany of  this  kind  to  be  organized  in  New  York  is 
the  Otsego  Forestry  Company,  located  at  Coopers- 
town.  During  the  past  two  years  it  has  planted 
about  two  hundred  acres  and  now  owns  a  total  of 
six  hundred  acres  suitable  for  reforestation.  A 
similar  organization  has  been  perfected  by  the 
Conservation  Club  of  Oneonta,  New  York,  which 
has  purchased  about  three  hundred  acres  of  land  to 
be  maintained  as  a  game  refuge  as  well  as  for  the 
purpose  of  creating  a  new  forest.  The  Fish  and 
Game  Club  of  Bainbridge,  New  York,  has  under- 
taken the  reforestation  of  a  tract  of  forty  acres 
presented  to  the  Club,  and,  as  the  conditions  which 
accompany  this  gift  of  land  provide  that  if  at  any 
time  the  club  may  cease  to  exist  the  land  and  forests 
shall  go  to  the  town  of  Bainbridge,  this  project  may 
also  result  in  the  establishment  of  a  strictly  town 
forest. 

These  represent  a  few  noteworthy  eastern  exam- 


TOWN  FORESTS  139 

pies,  but  the  movement  has  more  recently  extended 
to  the  middle-western  states,  Ohio  having  now  two 
city  forests,  one  owned  by  Cincinnati  and  one  by 
Oberlin.  State  legislation  has  made  it  possible  for 
other  Ohio  cities  to  follow  this  example  and  they 
are  continually  being  urged  to  do  so. 

A  town  forest  is  handled  in  somewhat  the  fol- 
lowing way.  If  there  are  already  trees  of  useful 
species  growing  on  the  land,  a  little  immediate  thin- 
ning will  probably  tend  to  encourage  their  growth, 
and  the  trees  taken  out  may  be  sold  for  fuel,  fence- 
posts,  poles,  wood-turning,  or  some  similar  purpose, 
the  income  thus  derived  being  dependent  upon  the 
extent  of  mature  or  semi-mature  trees  available. 
In  the  meantime,  a  vacant  or  semi-treeless  area  Is 
planted  with  seedlings  of  such  species  as  are  best 
adapted  to  the  region.  Pine  is  often  planted  in 
Massachusetts  because  the  white  pine  is  the  native 
soft-wood  tree  of  that  state,  and  has  a  wide  utility. 
In  the  middle-west,  however,  hardwoods,  although 
slower  growing,  are  often  found  more  suitable. 
The  selection  of  species  is  a  matter  upon  which  the 
community  should  take  the  advice  of  some  experi- 
enced authority,  such  as  the  Forest  Board  of  Its 
own  state  or  the  United  States  Forest  Service. 
States  with  a  forestry  department  of  their  own  can 
often  supply  supervision  without  charge.     The  ultl- 


140 


OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 


mate  development  to  be  anticipated  comprises  the 
joint  employment  of  a  specially  trained  forester  by 
neighboring  towns  and  communities. 

A  single  town  can  hardly  afford  to  start  its  own 
nursery  for  raising  the  two  or  three  year  old  seed- 


In  Europe  the  town   forest  plan   goes  far  toward  a  solution  of  the 
unemployment  problem.    Could  we  not  also  adopt  this  remedy? 

lings  to  be  ultimately  set  out,  but  such  states  as 
have  made  provision  for  official  recognition  of  the 
town  forest  system  are  establishing  extensive  public 
nurseries  and  usually  give  away  seedlings  free  of 
charge.    In  Massachusetts,  moreover,  the  state  for- 


TOWN  FORESTS  141' 

estry  association  offered  to  plant  free  of  charge  five; 
thousand  trees,  or  approximately  five  acres,  for  any 
city  or  town  which  would  legally  establish  a  forest 
of  one  hundred  acres  or  more  during  the  calendar 
year  1922.  Planting  may  usually  be  carried  on  at  a 
cost  per  acre  of  from  five  dollars  upwards,  depend- 
ing upon  the  cheapness  of  labor  available. 

Once  properly  set  out  the  seedlings  will  grow  for 
any  desired  period  with  little  attention  other  than 
fire  protection  and  occasional  cooperation  with  the 
state  or  federal  government  for  the  suppression  of 
blights  and  insect  pests,  but  generally  speaking,  the 
community  will  select  trees  of  such  species  as  are 
least  susceptible  to  damage  from  this  source.  Al- 
though no  forest  started  by  tree  planting  can  yield 
immediate  returns,  municipal  ownership  offers  the 
advantage  of  tax  exemption  or  partial  assessment 
during  the  period  of  waiting.  In  the  meantime, 
too,  the  community  gains  through  gradual  beauti- 
fication  of  the  land  and  protection  from  soil  erosion 
during  heavy  rains. 

The  age  of  maturity  varies  for  different  species. 
Some  of  the  pines  begin  to  yield  commercially 
valuable  lumber  In  twenty-five  to  thirty  years,  while 
pulpwood  may  be  obtained  in  the  south  a  little 
earlier.  Except  for  thinnings  made  to  promote 
good  growth  the  hardwood  forests  of  Europe  are 


142  OUR  VANISHING  FORESTS 

often  left  for  over  a  century.  As  different  sections 
of  the  forest  reach  the  desired  age  the  exploitation 
begins.  Wood  may  be  sold  as  it  stands  upon  the 
stump,  or  the  town  may  itself  carry  on  the  logging 
operations  and  dispose  of  the  product.  A  consid- 
erable amount  of  pine  on  the  Petersham  poor  farm 
already  mentioned  was  sold  to  a  lumberman  who 
took  out  the  trees  and  disposed  of  the  waste  ac- 
cording to  prescribed  methods.  It  is  an  advantage, 
however,  to  have  the  forest  more  or  less  uneven  in 
age,  as  if  it  is  not  all  cut  at  the  same  time,  the  bared 
spots  will  re-seed  themselves  from  the  surrounding 
trees. 

The  success  of  the  town  forest  idea  in  America 
depends  upon  a  wide  extension  of  the  plan.  To 
obtain  the  maximum  profit  a  well  developed  market 
for  thinnings  and  by-products  is  essential,  and  one 
single  isolated  community  can  never  succeed  as  well 
as  it  could  If  its  neighbors  followed  the  same  policy. 
If  the  farmers  between  the  towns  meanwhile  care 
for  and  develop  their  wood-lots,  so  much  the  better 
for  all  concerned.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  a  fallacy 
for  any  community  to  wait  for  its  neighbor  to  start. 
The  first  good  lumber  harvested  in  a  region  where 
tree-growing  is  litde  practised,  will  sell  in  competi- 
tion only  with  lumber  coming  from  the  far  away 
Pacific  Coast — lumber  which  bears  a  freight  charge 


TOWN  FORESTS  143 

in  excess  of  its  original  value — and  the  return  is 
sure. 

There  is  a  final  feature  of  the  town  forest  move- 
ment which  in  itself  goes  far  to  justify  the  plan. 
The  Black  Forest  of  Germany,  the  Vosges  district 
of  France  and  parts  of  Switzerland,  are  the  great 
communal  forest  regions  of  the  world.  Although 
these  are  manufacturing  sections  subject  to  all  the 
ups  and  down  of  industry,  the  town  forests  so 
effectively  absorb  the  surplus  labor  that  unemploy- 
ment is  practically  unknown.  When  industrial  con- 
ditions are  poor  planting  and  thinning  are  pushed, 
and  roads  to  increase  the  accessibility  of  certain 
wooded  sections  are  built.  When  labor  is  scarce 
the  forest  can  wait.  Here  in  America  periodical 
epidemics  of  unemployment  form  one  of  our  most 
serious  national  problems.  Could  we  not  also  find 
a  remedy  in  the  town  forest  plan? 


CHAPTER  XVII 

Reforestation  to  Pay  Dividends 

The  new  attitude  of  the  lumber  industry;  the  ex- 
perience of  one  of  the  largest  lumber  companies  in 
the  United  States  which  is  basing  its  future  policy 
upon  reforesting  its  own  land. 

It  is  evident  that  if  our  forests  are  allowed  to 
disappear,  all  kinds  of  industries  from  paper  manu- 
facturing to  shoe  making  will  fail,  and  even  the 
production  of  food  will  be  difficult.  Yet  it  is  the 
lumberman  himself  who  will  suffer  first.  What  is 
he  doing  about  it?  As  in  nearly  every  other  indus- 
try, much  of  the  lumber  business  has  been  handed 
down  from  father  to  son  for  generations.  On  the 
Pacific  Coast  today  you  meet  the  sons  and  grand- 
sons of  the  men  who  built  the  first  sawmills  in 
Massachusetts.  When  the  forests  were  cut  in  New 
York,  in  Pennsylvania  and  in  Michigan,  these  men 
left  their  shanties  and  their  dismantled  mills  and 
bought  new  timber  further  west.  Now  they  can  go 
no  further.  It  is  difficult  to  convince  a  man  who 
stands  in  the  middle  of  a  virgin  forest  which  will 
144 


REFORESTATION  TO  PAY  DIVIDENDS   145 


supply  his  mill  for  years  to  come,  that  it  will  all 
some  day  be  gone.  There  are,  however,  many 
lumbermen  who  can  already  foresee  that  the  end 
will  come,  not  merely  for  their  children,  but  during 
their  own  lives.     Some  of  us  are  tempted  to  say: 


The  old  type  of  lumber  town  and  the  new.  To  the  left  of  the  sawmill 
shown  in  the  composite  picture  above  may  be  seen  the  temporary  shacks 
of  an  industry  intending  to  deforest  the  land  and  then  move  on.  To  the 
right  may  be  seen  the  lumber  town  of  today,  relying  for  its  permanence 
upon  a  poUcy  of  continued  reforestation. 

"Well,  you  brought  it  on  yourselves  by  devastating 
the  forest,"  and  the  lumbermen  answer  "No,  you 
demanded  cheap  lumber  and  we  gave  it  to  you,  com- 
peting with  each  other  to  turn  out  the  most  for  the 
least  money.  You  are  responsible."  Why  argue 
the  point?     The  fact  remains,  and  today  no  one  is 


146  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

more  interested  in  finding  a  way  out  of  the  dif- 
ficulty than  the  men  who  depend  for  their  livehhood 
upon  the  production  of  wood. 

The  first  lumbermen  who  have  seriously  taken 
up  the  idea  of  growing  timber  to  maintain  their  in- 
dustry have  been  those  fortunate  enough  to  be  still 
located  near  the  principal  markets.  The  freight 
saving  helps  foot  the  bill.  There  are  exceptions  and 
short-sighted  individuals  everywhere,  but  it  is  al- 
ready the  general  rule  in  the  east  that  lumbermen 
no  longer  cut  entirely  by  the  wasteful  methods  for- 
merly necessary  under  strenuous  competition.  Even 
where  no  regulations  exist,  they  are  trying  to  pro- 
tect the  young  growth  or  to  leave  seed  trees ;  and, 
where  they  sell  in  the  same  market  with  lumber 
upon  which  freight  must  be  paid  from  the  Pacific 
Coast,  many  can  and  do  set  aside  a  fund  for  re- 
planting. Were  it  not  for  the  fire  hazard,  for  the 
fact  that  a  few  hours  of  forest  fire  are  sufficient  to 
completely  destroy  the  accumulated  investment  of 
years,  there  would  be  much  more  work  of  this  kind. 
What  is  the  use  of  setting  aside  money  to  plant 
seedlings  if  there  is  more  than  an  even  chance  of 
their  being  burned  up  before  they  reach  maturity? 
Lumbermen  are  accordingly  behind  every  movement 
for  state  and  national  cooperation  in  fire  protec- 
tion, every  movement  for  the  farmer's  wood  crop, 


REFORESTATION  TO  PAY  DIVIDENDS    147 

for  National  forest  extension,  for  the  town  forest, 
and  for  public  education  in  the  importance  of  the 
whole  problem.  When  the  public  recognizes  the 
value  of  reforestation  it  can  be  practised  with  suc- 
cess and  certainty;  before  that,  only  with  the  aid  of 
good  luck. 

Thank  Heaven,  however,  there  are  a  few  large 
lumber  manufacturers  who  are  willing  to  take  the 
chance  and  who,  through  their  endeavors,  are 
assisting  in  the  educational  process.  One  of  the 
largest  manufacturers  of  wood  products  in  this 
country  announces  that  it  has  now  permanently 
established  itself  in  Louisiana  and  will  follow  this 
Hew  trend  to  its  logical  conclusion.  It  will  never 
again  cut  the  last  of  its  timber  and  pull  up  stakes  in 
the  old  way  to  follow  the  ever-receding  forest  be- 
cause its  own  supply  is  to  be  made  inexhaustible. 
In  common  with  most  other  lumber  manufacturers, 
this  company  once  looked  askance  on  the  idea  of 
reforestation.  Its  hope  was  to  build  up,  coinci- 
dently  with  the  lumber  industry,  a  great  agricul- 
tural center  based  on  the  cut-over  lands,  which, 
when  the  mill  had  finished  its  work,  was  to  give 
profitable  occupation  to  all  comers.  After  several 
years  of  experimenting,  however,  it  was  evident 
that  the  returns  from  this  plan  were  hardly  suf- 
ficient to  form  the  basis  of  industrial  permanency. 


s 


148  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

It  was  then  that  the  natural  regrowth  of  certain 
cut-over  sections  where  fire  had  been  kept  out, 
began  to  direct  attention  to  the  idea  of  reforesta- 
tion, and  the  new  policy  was  the  result.  Instead  of 
the  usual  group  of  ugly,  unpainted  shacks,  this 
company  has  built  a  handsome  town,  each  building 
a  model  of  its  kind.  Parks,  schools,  offices,  hospi- 
tal, hotel  and  homes  are  hardly  to  be  equalled  in 
any  city  of  a  hundred  thousand  people.  It  all  rep- 
resents faith  in  just  one  idea,  that  sane  and  practical 
reforestation  can  be  made  to  pay  dividends. 

The  problem  of  growing  timber  is  perhaps  more 
simple  in  the  south  than  in  certain  other  parts  of  the 
country.  Given  a  chance,  Nature  generously  at- 
tends to  the  re-seeding,  and  the  Loblolly  or  Old 
Field  pine,  indigenous  to  that  section,  is  one  of  the 
most  rapid  growing  of  all  species.  Although  taking 
about  five  times  as  long  to  reach  maturity,  the 
Longleaf  pine,  which  for  many  years  has  been  the 
standard  wood  for  construction  purposes  through- 
out most  of  the  United  States,  also  reproduces 
freely. 

The  chief  obstacle  has  been  fire.  In  this  well- 
settled  community  the  careless  match  has  been  re- 
sponsible for  the  destruction  of  many  millions  of 
seedlings  every  year.  Some  who  profess  to  under- 
stand the  principles  of  forestry  have  claimed  that  a 


REFORESTATION  TO  PAY  DIVIDENDS   149 

burning  over  of  the  land  to  remove  debris  immedi- 
ately after  the  timber  is  cut  is  one  of  the  best  means 
of  promoting  reforestation.  A  single  fire  often  does 
result  favorably  in  the  Douglas  fir  country,  but  for 
the  pine  of  the  south  this  is  emphatically  untrue, 
and  although  a  few  seedlings  may  survive  the  first 
burning,  the  majority  are  destroyed.  The  danger- 
ous season  in  southern  Louisiana  is  during  the  win- 
ter months,  for  there  is  no  snowfall,  and  as  soon  as 
the  first  frost  nips  the  long  grass  which  everywhere 
covers  the  forest  floor,  it  becomes  a  most  inflam- 
mable tinder  ready  to  flare  up  at  the  slightest  spark. 
Plowed  fire  lanes,  dividing  the  tracts  into  the 
smallest  possible  units  within  a  reasonable  limit  of 
expense  have  been  used  with  success,  and  this  com- 
pany Is  to  supplement  the  fire  lanes  with  watch 
towers  where  a  man  will  be  continually  on  duty. 

The  present  town  site  of  Bogalusa,  Louisiana, 
was  entirely  cut  over  about  fifteen  years  ago. 
Where  repeated  grass  fires  have  burned  through 
there  is  practically  no  reproduction,  but  in  many 
naturally  protected  places  a  splendid  second  growth 
of  Loblolly  may  be  observed.  For  one  such  group 
the  Forestry  Department  has  carefully  counted, 
measured,  and  numbered  every  tree,  and  keeps  a 
record  of  annual  growth  as  a  check  for  Its  own 
estimates.    During  1920,  a  few  of  these  trees  were 


150 


OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 


cut  and  manufactured  into  paper  pulp  as  a  proof  of 
the  practicability  of  the  reforestation  idea.  Doubt- 
less it  would  have  paid  better  to  have  left  them  four 
or  five  years  longer,  but  in  this  case  the  company 
merely  desired  to  illustrate  its  contention. 

Many  natives  of  the  Longleaf  pine  country  claim 
that  an  area  timbered  with  Longleaf  will  not  come 


Fattening  at  the  expense  of  the  young  forest. 

up  a  second  time  to  the  same  species,  but  only  to  the 
Shortleaf  varieties.  The  Louisiana  State  Forestry 
Department  some  time  ago  demonstrated  the  falsity 
of  this  theory  and  explained  the  reason.  Every 
settler  in  that  country,  be  he  white  or  black,  keeps 
a  varying  number  of  hogs.  The  chances  are  he  him- 
self does  not  know  how  many,  for  the  state  is  with- 


REFORESTATION  TO  PAY  DIVIDENDS    151 

out  a  stock  law,  and  stock  of  every  kind  is  allowed 
to  range  about  through  the  unfenced  woods  and  cut 
over  lands.  The  Longleaf  seedling  devotes  the  first 
year  or  so  of  its  life  chiefly  to  growing  roots,  and 
the  long  tap-root  with  its  heavy  sugar  content  is  a 
favorite  tit-bit  for  range  hogs.  In  order  to  eat  the 
sweet  root  a  few  hungry  razor-backs  will  pretty 
effectually  kill  the  one  or  two  year  old  Longleaf 
stand  on  a  tremendous  acreage,  but  they  will  not 
harm  Shortleaf  seedlings.  The  company  has  care- 
fully fenced  nearly  five  thousand  acres  of  land  upon 
most  of  which  the  1920  seed-fall  is  growing,  this 
being  the  first  large  scale  work  of  the  kind  ever  at- 
tempted in  the  country.  Fencing  is  an  expensive 
operation,  but  the  company  has  been  willing  to 
experiment  along  this  line  because  of  its  faith  in  the 
potential  value  of  the  investment. 

In  spite  of  these  protective  measures  it  is  realized 
that  no  new  development  can  successfully  take  place 
until  a  large  majority  of  the  people  are  educated 
to  appreciate  its  value.  The  company's  department 
of  forestry  has  made  it  a  principal  part  of  its  work 
.to  conduct  a  thorough  and  continuous  publicity  for 
the  education  of  the  local  population  as  to  the  im- 
portance and  value  of  a  permanent  wood  supply. 
This  has  been  carried  on  in  an  excellent  common 
sense    way — not    only    through    the    local    papers, 


152  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

through  posted  signs  and  special  appeals,  but  also 
through  interesting  exhibits  of  forest  products  at 
the  country  fairs.  Experience  shows  that  visitors 
crowd  to  these  forestry  booths,  if  only  to  search  for 
their  friends  among  the  photographs  of  farmers 
who  have  already  taken  steps  to  plant  or  conserve 
the  young  timber  growth  on  their  land,  but  they 
see  the  other  exhibits  too.  It  is  possible  that  much 
of  the  success  which  will  attend  this  educational 
work  will  be  due  to  the  special  efforts  of  the  Chief 
Forester,  for  he  himself  was  born  and  bred  not  far 
from  the  present  town,  and  the  personal  equation  is 
always  important  in  obtaining  good  will. 

Where  it  appears  that,  due  to  the  interference  of 
man's  agency,  the  cut-over  land  has  not  been  prop- 
erly re-seeded,  the  company  has  experimented  with 
various  methods  of  sowing.  The  best  way  has  not 
yet  been  determined.  On  two  thousand  acres  of 
land  Longleaf  pine  seed  was  broadcasted  in  the  fall, 
but  without  satisfactory  results.  About  a  pound 
was  scattered  over  each  acre;  but  Nature's  own 
methods  are  more  lavish  than  man  can  afford,  and 
it  is  probable  that,  as  the  seed  was  scattered  at  a 
time  when  other  food  for  the  birds  was  scarce,  the 
feathered  flock  which  followed  the  sowers  probably 
profited  most  by  the  operation.  On  the  other  hand, 
eight  hundred  acres  of  fenced  land  were  roughly 


REFORESTATION  TO  PAY  DIVIDENDS    153 

plowed,  and  then  about  half  a  pound  per  acre  of 
Longleaf,  Loblolly  and  Slash  pine  seed  were  drilled 
into  the  soil.  The  results  here  are  already  evident, 
and  the  ground  is  well  covered  with  fine  little 
seedling  trees  of  these  species.  Fair  results  have 
also  been  obtained  where  several  thousand  Loblolly 
seedlings  found  in  the  woods  under  the  mature  trees 
were  transplanted.  These  seedlings  could  not  have 
lived  under  the  shade  of  the  dense  tops,  but  about 
fifty  per  cent,  are  now  doing  well  on  a  cut-over 
area.  When  it  is  considered  that  fifty  mature  trees 
to  an  acre  here  constitute  a  fair  stand,  it  is  evident 
that,  even  if  a  high  percentage  of  the  seedlings  is 
lost,  the  experiment  will  still  have  proved  successful. 
It  is  interesting  to  note  that  after  advertising  to 
buy  pine  seed  at  one  to  two  dollars  a  pound  without 
success,  the  company  was  subsequently  able  to  col- 
lect its  own  seed  from  the  heavy  1920  crop  at  a  cost 
as  low  as  fifty  cents  a  pound. 

It  should  be  kept  in  mind  that  all  these  methods 
of  artificial  reforestation  have  been  purely  experi- 
mental, and  the  most  practical  ideas  will  be  grad- 
ually evolved.  The  keynote  of  the  whole  plan  is 
not  to  assist  Nature,  but  so  far  as  possible  to 
remove  the  obstacles  which  man  has  placed  in  her 
way.  The  Forestry  Department  operates  well 
ahead  of  the  logging  crews,  plowing  out  its  fire 


154  OUR  VANISHING    FORESTS 

lines,  and  watching  to  protect  the  millions  of  tiny 
seedlings  in  the  soil.  When  the  logging  crews  begin 
work,  to  be  sure,  more  than  half  of  these  tiny 
seedlings  will  be  destroyed  by  the  skidding  of  the 
logs,  etc.,  but  enough  will  probably  be  left  to  estab- 
lish a  crop.  In  case  these  seedlings  already  in  the 
soil  should  not  be  sufficient,  the  forester  also  selects 
groups  of  young  healthy  seed  trees  which  he  marks 
with  a  painted  circle.  These  the  logging  foreman 
must  protect  from  all  bruising  and  injury.  The  seed 
tree  idea  is  everywhere  in  its  infancy,  and  most 
attempts  along  this  line  have  frankly  failed  because 
the  forest  tree  is  a  community  dweller.  When  left 
alone  by  the  cutting  of  its  neighbors  it  usually  has  a 
short  life,  blown  down  by  the  first  strong  wind,  or 
succumbing  to  the  attack  of  some  insect  which  has 
multiplied  in  the  dead  brush  left  behind  by  the  log- 
gers. From  leaving  single  selected  seed  trees  the 
company  obtained  poor  results,  but  the  group  idea 
is  a  comparatively  new  one  and  only  the  next  year 
or  two  can  testify  as  to  its  effectiveness. 

The  most  expert  advice  from  both  state  and  na- 
tional sources  has  been  obtained  in  the  formulation 
of  the  whole  reforestation  policy.  As  an  example 
of  thorough-going  faith  in  the  idea  the  company  is 
now  paying  for  an  exhaustive  soil  analysis  and  sur- 
vey of  its  land  holdings,  to  determine  just  what  por- 


REFORESTATION  TO  PAY  DIVIDENDS   155 

tions  are  more  chiefly  suitable  for  agriculture,  and 
what  can  best  be  reforested.  The  results  of  the 
earlier  reforestation  experiments  will  then  be 
applied  to  many  thousands  of  additional  acres  so 
selected,  and  a  really  perpetual  timber  supply  will 
be  obtained.  The  regrowth  of  the  town  site  has 
already  demonstrated  the  practicability  of  this  as 
far  as  the  Shortleaf  species  go;  but  the  plan  looks 
ahead  even  as  far  as  forty  or  fifty  years  when  the 
first  replanted  Longleaf  pine  will  reach  a  merchant- 
able size — a  plan  so  far  reaching  and  revolutionary 
that  it  may  in  time  succeed  in  changing  the  entire 
character  of  the  lumber  industry.  It  certainly 
seems  worth  a  try.  This  company  is  one  of  several 
which  have  been  the  pioneers  of  the  United  States 
in  large  scale  reforestation  and  thoroughgoing 
conservation  methods.  They  have  built  for  perma- 
nence through  faith  in  that  experiment.  When  that 
faith  is  justified  and  practical  reforestation  actually 
begins  to  pay  dividends,  we  may  cease  to  fear  the 
exhaustion  of  our  timber  resources. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

Philanthropy  or  Efficiency 

How  the  pulp  and  paper  industry  regards  refor- 
estation. 

If  forest  re-establishment  is  necessary  for  the 
maintenance  of  the  lumber  industry,  it  is  doubly  so 
for  the  continued  production  of  pulp  and  paper. 
Paper  manufacturers  cannot  pull  up  a  two  million 
dollar  plant  with  all  its  expensive  and  heavy  paper- 
making  machinery  to  move  elsewhere,  as  the  saw- 
mill men  have  done.  Forest  growing  with  them 
has  passed  the  stage  of  ineffectual  philanthropic 
efforts.  They  must  make  their  wood  supply  last  or 
go  out  of  business,  and  the  whole  industry  cries  for 
an  efficient  management  of  the  woodgrowing 
problem. 

Certain  methods  of  conservative  cutting  and  of 
planting  forest  trees  have  been  undertaken  by  a 
number  of  pulpwood  forest  owners,  particularly  in 
the  east;  but  these  developments  have  not  yet 
reached  an  extent  sufficient  to  have  an  important 
effect  upon  the  prospective  wood  supply,  and  they 

156 


PHILANTHROPY  OR  EFFICIENCY        157 

are  significant  chiefly  as  showing  the  present  trend 
in  the  management  of  privately  owned  timber  lands. 
One  of  the  largest  and  best  known  companies,  v/hich 
draws  upon  timber  in  northern  New  York  State,  has 
been  making  a  thorough  and  comprehensive  survey 
of  all  its  holdings  with  a  view  to  establishing  such 
methods  as  will  tend  to  make  the  material  last, 
while  further  south  in  the  Allegheny  mountain 
region  another  prominent  concern  is  holding  about 
134,000  acres  of  cut-over  land  for  a  second  timber 
crop.  Through  various  experiments  the  pulp  and 
paper  industry  has  done  much  to  establish  an  index 
of  forest  planting  costs,  and  a  very  complete  report 
on  this  subject  covering  various  sections  of  the 
United  States  from  Maine  to  Minnesota,  and  ex- 
tending into  Ontario  and  Quebec,  has  recently  been 
prepared.  Because  many  of  the  large  Canadian 
pulp  plants  have  been  operated  by  American  citizens 
in  their  search  for  hitherto  untouched  forest 
resources,  relations  with  Canadian  paper  manufac- 
turers are  very  close.  They  indicate  that  on  the 
whole,  eastern  Canada  is  somewhat  ahead  of  us  in 
dealing  with  the  problem,  and  indeed,  the  mutual 
fire  protection  associations  of  Quebec  and  the 
scheme  of  government  cooperation  and  education 
there  in  effect,  form  a  model  which  we  may  do  well 
to  follow. 


158 


OUR  VANISHING    FORESTS 


Pulp  and  paper  men  in  all  sections  of  the  country 
are  fighting  for  the  education  of  the  public  and  foi 
control  of  the  fire  hazard  as  no  other  group  has 
hitherto  done.  Not  only  have  they  taken  the  risk 
in  experimental  planting,  but  in  combination  with 
other  wood  producers,  with  the  United  States  Gov- 


QifiQW  (WOlSE   TtlttJt 


Pulpwood   growing  has  passed  the  stage  of  ineffectual  philanthropic 
effort.    The  wood  supply  must  be  made  to  last  or  the  whole  paper  indus- 
try will  fail. 

ernment,  with  state  officials,  and  with  the  American 
Forestry  Association,  have  become  prime  movers  in 
the  present  efforts  to  bring  about  a  national  forest 
policy.  It  might  have  been  well  had  they  possessed 
the  foresight  to  start  this  work  a  generation  or  so 
earlier,  but  men  who  can  successfully  and  profitably 


PHILANTHROPY  OR  EFFICIENCY        159 

carry  on  their  own  business  and  at  the  same  time 
plan  for  future  generations,  are  rare.  If  the  wood- 
using  industries  have  at  last  waked  up  and  squarely 
confronted  the  general  peril,  the  rest  of  us,  subject 
to  the  same  handicaps  of  human  nature,  had  far 
better  enter  into  whole  hearted  cooperation  rather 
than  sit  back  and  indulge  in  carping  criticisms. 

This  does  not  mean,  however,  that  the  entire 
industry  has  definitely  adopted  the  practice  of  con- 
servative cutting  and  forest  planting  on  the  Euro- 
pean plan.  The  desirability,  the  ultimate  necessity, 
is  evident;  but  it  is  clearly  cheaper  to  cut  every  tree 
on  a  given  area  once  and  for  all,  according  to  the 
present  methods,  than  to  periodically  re-visit  the 
same  ground  and  select  single  specimens  or  patches 
in  order  to  promote  natural  regeneration.  Roads, 
railways,  camps  and  machinery  may  be  abandoned 
or  moved  elsewhere  at  a  less  cost  than  is  required 
to  maintain  them  for  such  occasional  use.  Artificial 
planting,  on  the  other  hand,  equally  necessitates  new 
and  increased  expense.  What  the  pulp  and  paper 
manufacturers  are  doing,  therefore,  is  chiefly  in  the 
line  of  finding  out  how  this  increased  cost  may  be 
met. 

Practically  speaking,  forest  management  should 
be  the  efficiency  engineering  of  the  wood-using 
industries.     We  must  get  away  from  the  habit  of 


160  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

mind  that  the  lumberman  is  the  forester's  enemy, 
and  vice-versa.  As  the  Irishman  would  say,  the 
lumberman  should  be  a  forester  first  and  the  for- 
ester should  be  a  lumberman  first.  A  combination 
of  the  two,  a  man  who  has  had  real  experience  in 
both  fields,  may  be  rightly  called  a  forest  engineer, 
and  it  is  his  type  that  is  gradually  helping  to  solve 
the  problem. 

In  parts  of  eastern  Canada,  Maine,  New  Hamp- 
shire and  New  York,  pulpwood  is  brought  to  the 
mills  by  much  the  same  methods  of  winter  cutting 
and  spring  driving  of  the  rivers  as  were  made 
famous  in  Stewart  Edward  White's  stories  of  the 
old  Michigan  days.  The  company  itself  operates  a 
certain  number  of  camps  under  its  direct  manage- 
ment and  control,  but  often  a  considerable  quantity 
of  the  timber  is  "contracted."  While  it  was  gen- 
erally realized  that  the  contract  system  resulted  in 
only  the  best  timber  being  taken  and  the  remainder 
being  left  in  scattered  bunches  which  would  not 
permit  of  a  second  cut  except  at  prohibitive  cost,  it 
has  remained  for  the  new  type  of  forest  engineer  to 
demonstrate  the  really  awful  and  destructive  waste 
therefrom.  It  is  the  forest  engineer  too,  who  has 
now  produced  figures  to  show  that  pre-planning  and 
careful  preliminary  reconnaissance  and  mapping, 
even  at  considerable  expense,  will  not  only  extend 


PHILANTHROPY  OR  EFFICIENCY        161 

the  life  of  the  operation,  but  also  bring  logs  to  the 
mill  at  a  less  cost  per  cord.  Real  cost  systems  have 
been  little  applied  to  woods  operations,  but  some 
forest  engineers  hope  to  demonstrate  that  this 
study  will  prove  quite  as  valuable  to  a  large  scale 
logging  operation  as  to  a  cash  register  or  automo- 
bile manufacturer. 

While  old  school  logging  bosses  used  to  laugh  at 
forestry  ideas,  it  is  now  the  Forestry  Department, 
made  up  of  a  personnel  of  forest  engineers,  which 
tends  to  become  the  planning  and  control  depart- 
ment of  the  woods  operations.  At  the  beginning  of 
the  season  a  conference  of  officials  is  held,  and  the 
chief  forester  is  informed  how  many  cords  of  wood 
will  be  required  for  the  coming  year  and  what 
species  may  be  used.  With  the  aid  of  complete 
surveys,  some  of  them  made  perhaps  with  the  aid 
of  aerial  photography,  the  forestry  department 
then  selects  the  areas  to  be  cut,  locates  the  camp 
sites  and  sends  experienced  men  to  blaze  out  the 
necessary  roads.  Then,  after  the  cutting  begins,  a 
regular  inspection  is  carried  on  to  see  that  company 
camps  and  contractors  alike  abide  by  the  directions 
given.  Progress  reports,  hitherto  almost  unknown 
in  the  logging  industry,  keep  the  mill  management 
informed  as  to  the  expectancy  of  raw  material, 
while  a  separate  branch  of  the  department  carries 


162  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

on  special  surveys  for  bridge  or  dam  sites,  makes 
time-studies  of  operations  to  determine  fuel  and 
labor  costs  per  unit  of  production,  and  conducts 
experiments  with  new  equipment.  Fire  protection 
is  not  forgotten,  as  the  closer  touch  between  for- 
ester and  woods  operations  alone  makes  it  more 
easy  of  attainment,  but  the  greatest  advantage  to 
the  owners  comes  through  the  fact  that  the  life  of 
their  operation  is  extended,  and  every  new  economy 
introduced  means  just  so  much  saving  which  may  be 
devoted  to  tree  growing. 

This  plan,  however,  is  no  panacea.  The  fact 
that  a  few  lumber  or  pulp  concerns  may  find  it  pos- 
sible to  carry  on  a  certain  degree  of  reforestation, 
even  under  existing  conditions,  does  not  alone 
guarantee  a  perpetual  and  all  sufficient  supply  of 
wood  products.  Each  logger,  each  manufacturer, 
has  his  own  specific  problem  to  solve  and  each  must 
figure  not  only  upon  the  new  timber  crop,  fifty  or 
sixty  years  hence,  but  upon  how  the  hiatus  between 
the  exhaustion  of  the  old  supply  and  the  maturity 
of  the  young  plantations  may  be  bridged.  A  maxi- 
mum of  logging  efficiency  is  indeed  essential  but  it 
must  be  supplemented  by  far-sighted  study,  by  state 
and  federal  aid  based  upon  a  practical  knowledge 
of  the  situation,  and,  most  of  all,  by  public  educa- 
tion in  the  aim  of  a  sane  forest  policy. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

The  Great  God  Competition 

How   competition   hinders   commercial    forestry   de- 
velopments; the  remedies  at  hand. 

One  of  the  greatest  obstacles  to  the  practice  of 
conservative  lumbering  and  reforestation  lies  in  the 
restriction  placed  upon  operating  expenditure,  a 
restriction  directly  due  to  competition.  In  spite  of 
a  great  deal  of  talk  and  propaganda  designed  to 
spread  a  contrary  opinion,  both  the  lumber  and 
paper  industries  are  highly  competitive,  and  as  a 
whole  they  are  no  more  profitable  than  any  other 
business  requiring  equal  ingenuity  and  similar  risk. 
Past  Investigations  of  a  so-called  "lumber  trust" 
have,  on  this  point,  rendered  a  clear  decision.  When 
general  business  is  good,  then  people  have  money 
to  build  homes  and  factories,  the  railroads  buy  cars 
and  ties,  put  In  new  bridges,  etc.,  telegraph  and 
telephone  companies  extend  their  facilities,  and  the 
stimulation  of  commerce  requires  more  paper  and 
more  boxes  and  crates  for  shipping  goods.  At  such 
163 


164  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

times  profits  are  often  large,  but  every  conservative 
operator  knows  that  he  must  put  aside  part  of  those 
earnings  to  carry  him  over  the  slack  periods  when 
most  concerns  can  hardly  make  ends  meet  and 
others  are  temporarily  forced  to  shut  down.  Now 
suppose  that  Lumber  Company  A  adopts  a  policy 
of  scientific  forest  cutting,  or  sets  aside  a  fund  for 
reforestation,  either  of  which  plans  might  easily 
increase  from  fifty  cents  to  a  dollar  or  more  the 
cost  of  every  thousand  board  feet  of  lumber  it  pro- 
duces. Its  competitors,  however,  decide  to  keep  on 
along  the  old  lines.  During  good  times,  to  be  sure, 
if  the  A  Company  suffers  no  heavy  fire  losses  it  is 
gaining  something  for  the  distant  future,  but  its 
cash  reserves  are  lowered,  and  its  competitors  can 
easily  under-sell  it.  In  poor  times  the  company  finds 
itself  in  a  weakened  condition,  and  competition 
becomes  so  keen  that  the  whole  policy  may  be 
abandoned. 

If  any  single  state  adopts  compulsory  regulation 
of  forest  cutting,  the  cost  of  production  within  its 
borders  is  increased  above  the  level  prevailing  in 
other  states,  and,  unless  all  neighboring  common- 
wealths simultaneously  pursue  the  same  policy,  the 
industry  of  the  most  foresighted  is  temporarily 
penalized.  Such  was  indeed  the  case  a  short  time 
ago  when  Pennsylvania  tried  to  regulate  the  coal 


THE  GREAT  GOD  COMPETITION        165 

industry.    Having  a  practical  monopoly  on  anthra- 
cite,   there   was   comparatively   little    difficulty   in- 


Blind  and  destructive  competition— or  cooperative  regulation— which? 


166  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

volved,  but  at  the  prospect  of  regulating  the 
bituminous  industry  the  neighboring  miners  of  West 
Virginia  became  so  jubilant  that  the  Pennsylvania 
legislature  promptly  changed  its  mind.  The  much 
celebrated  law  of  competition  became  an  incubus 
which  threatened  the  whole  conservation  idea. 

"But,"  we  are  told,  "the  heartless  lumbermen 
must  be  regulated  to  prevent  them  from  devastating 
the  remaining  forests.  Let  Congress  pass  a  law  for 
all  the  states  and  for  all  the  lumber  industry.  Make 
a  set  of  regulations,  or  several  different  sets  apply- 
ing to  different  sections  of  the  country,  and  then  tax 
everyone  who  conforms  thereto  at  a  merely  nominal 
rate  per  thousand  feet  of  timber  cut.  Make  the 
non-conformists  pay  a  tax  ten  to  twenty  times  as 
high.  That  will  bring  them  into  line."  Somehow 
or  other  Congress  has  not  as  yet  waxed  enthusiastic 
regarding  this  plan.  If  everyone  must  simultane- 
ously adopt  more  expensive  methods,  the  lumber 
industry  will  be  obliged  to  shift  the  cost  to  the 
consuming  public,  and  each  congressional  constitu- 
ency will  have  something  to  say  to  its  representative 
and  its  senator  who  helped  pass  the  law.  Our 
farming  communities  are  fifty  per  cent,  underbuilt 
and  our  cities  all  complain  of  a  housing  shortage 
because  people  cannot  afford  the  cost  of  building 
materials.    If  Congress  proposes  to  pass  legislation 


THE  GREAT  GOD  COMPETITION        167 

to  increase  that  cost,  the  stigma  of  unpopularity  is 
attached  in  advance.  Thirty-three  states,  which 
include  the  great  majority  of  the  most  populous 
and  most  powerful,  are  now  dependent  upon  other 
states  of  the  Union  for  their  timber  suppHes.  They 
cannot  do  business  unless  they  get  wood  from  the 
timber  exporting  states,  but  are  they  yet  ready  to 
pay  higher  prices  merely  to  insure  the  continuance 
of  that  supply? 

In  order  to  do  away  with  what  are  believed  to  be 
the  false  economies  of  competition,  Germany  stimu- 
lates the  creation  of  trusts.  There,  the  government 
in  a  measure  authorizes  a  price  high  enough  so  that 
everyone  finds  it  to  his  advantage  to  practice  the 
most  scientific  forest  methods.  State  forests,  town 
forests  and  private  owners  all  sell  on  approximately 
the  same  basis,  and  if  it  appears  that  a  temporary 
over-production  will  necessitate  cut-throat  competi- 
tion, the  government  and  private  owners  together 
work  out  a  scheme  of  exportation  that  practically 
means  the  dumping  of  the  surplus  upon  foreign 
markets.  Germany  feels  that  the  gains  from  inter- 
national commerce  and  the  continued  policy  of 
forest  growing  justifies  the  means  employed.  But 
how  about  ourselves?  We  abandoned  this  system 
some  years  ago  when  public  opinion  demanded  the 
breaking  up  of  the  oil  trust  and  other  monopolies. 


168  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

and  we  would  hardly  be  willing  to  reverse  the 
principle  of  the  Sherman  anti-trust  law  merely  for 
the  expectation  of  a  future  timber  supply.  The 
great  god  Competition  is  perhaps  too  zealously 
worshipped,  but  we  Americans  believe  in  that  prin- 
ciple, and  a  sudden  change  from  one  extreme  to  the 
other  is  out  of  the  question. 

Only  twenty-five  years  ago  Sweden  was  con- 
fronted with  a  similar  forest  problem.  Perhaps  it 
was  easier  for  a  smaller  country  which  had  never 
suffered  from  the  constitutional  struggle  between 
the  rights  of  individual  states  or  communities  and 
the  national  authority,  but  she  found  a  solution. 
The  law  there  enacted  approached  the  question 
from  the  community  viewpoint,  provided  for  teach- 
ing the  people  the  essential  importance  of  the  forest 
industries,  and  managed  to  appeal  to  local  pride  in 
such  a  way  that  the  necessary  regulations  and  the 
rather  bitter  pill  of  increased  cost  appeared  self- 
administered.  Competition  was  not  abolished  but 
a  coincident  spirit  of  cooperation  was  inspired.  We 
would  do  well  to  seek  this  as  our  own  model. 

During  1921  when  over-production  sharpened 
the  edge  of  competition,  hardly  any  two  lumbermen 
on  the  Pacific  Coast  sold  their  product  at  the  same 
price,  yet,  for  the  purpose  of  mutual  fire  protection, 
they  cooperated,   not   only  among   themselves  but 


THE  GREAT  GOD  COMPETITION        169 

with  the  forest  departments  of  their  several  states 
and  with  the  United  States  Forest  Service.  Lum- 
bermen's associations  assessed  their  members  in 
proportion  to  the  amount  of  lumber  produced,  and 
turned  over  the  money  to  the  state  and  national 
forest  authorities.  As  a  result  their  lands  were 
protected  better  than  ever  before.  In  California, 
moreover,  this  development  is  being  carried  still 
further.  The  Redwood  Manufacturers  Association 
has  adopted  a  far-reaching  plan,  a  policy  providing 
for  reforestation  on  a  scale  actually  commensurate 
with  the  amount  of  timber  cut.  At  this  writing  not 
all  of  the  association  members  have  fallen  into  line, 
but  the  work  already  done  is  at  least  an  indication 
of  the  willingness  of  many  lumbermen  to  cooperate 
in  the  solution  of  a  public  problem.  North,  south 
and  east  as  well,  the  association  movement  in  favor 
of  a  forest  policy  is  growing.  Lumbermen  and 
paper  producers  are  asking  their  various  states  to 
begin  the  promulgation  of  such  regulations  as  will 
not  too  much  penalize  them  under  competition,  but 
will  nevertheless  gradually  work  up  to  the  point  of 
simultaneous  and  consistent  enactment.  With  other 
leaders  in  the  conservation  movement  of  the  coun- 
try they  are  petitioning  Congress  to  encourage  and 
assist  the  work  in  a  manner  similar  to  that  in  which 
the  Federal  government  stimulates  the  construction 


170  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

of  good  roads  throughout  the  country.  That  Is,  if 
any  state  will  adopt  a  forest  policy  which  seems  to 
the  Secretary  of  Agriculture  of  the  United  States 
proper  and  adequate,  and  if  such  state  will  author- 
ize the  expenditure  of  sufficient  funds  to  carry  on  its 
share  of  fire  protection,  regulation,  etc.,  then  the 
United  States  Government  should  make  available  to 
that  state  an  equal  or  otherwise  fixed  amount.  This 
is  no  new  principle,  but  its  supporters  maintain  that 
a  broad  application  should  avoid  the  undesirable 
limitations  of  the  Weeks  Law,  and  that  the  result 
will  be  slowly  but  surely  attained.  Although  the 
handicaps  of  competition  may  cause  delay.  It  should 
progress  at  least  as  rapidly  as  the  people  of  the 
United  States  are  willing  and  ready  to  pay  the  cost. 
In  short,  it  involves  no  unpopular  legislation  by  an 
authority  which  must  spend  mIllion3  for  enforce- 
ment, but  is  a  policy  really  self-imposed  and  self- 
administered. 

Some  say  that  cooperation  Is  not  natural  to 
human  nature,  and  even  purport  to  believe  that 
when  men  do  cooperate  it  is  only  for  the  temporary 
satisfaction  of  a  selfish  aim.  In  a  measure  this  is 
true,  and  means  will  have  to  be  found  to  force  the 
stragglers  Into  line;  but  we  cooperated  during  the 
war  and  united  to  build  up  from  nothing  a  working 
and  fighting  machine  so  great  that  our  army  was  at 


THE  GREAT  GOD  COMPETITION        171 

least  the  deciding  factor  in  a  drawn  game.  When 
the  majority  of  the  people  appreciate  the  very  real 
threat  of  a  fast  approaching  timber  shortage  and 
realize  that  this  is  an  emergency  very  similar  to 
war,  cooperation  will  again  be  successful. 


CHAPTER  XX 

The  Essence  of  Success 

Growing  the    forests   at  the   market;    the    taxation 
problem;   public  nurseries  and  experiment  stations. 

Although  regulative  measures,  such  as  proposed 
in  the  preceding  chapter,  are  of  the  greatest  impor- 
tance, they  by  no  means  solve  the  whole  problem. 
Let  the  forests  of  the  west  gradually  dwindle  to  the 
point  where  they  are  only  sufficient  to  permanently 
supply  a  small  surplus  above  the  local  needs;  let  the 
forests  of  the  south  be  similarly  employed,  and  if 
we  can  in  the  meantime  gradually  bring  back  into 
production  the  idle  acres  of  the  eastern  and  central 
states  near  the  chief  points  of  wood  consumption, 
there  will  be  enough  for  all.  Our  northeastern  sec- 
tion now  produces  perhaps  ten  or  fifteen  per  cent. 
of  Its  total  wood  consumption.  Experts  say  it  can 
be  made  to  yield  at  least  sixty  per  cent. — and  this 
without  destroying  a  single  productive  farm,  or 
taking  away  a  single  acre  of  land  which  could  pro- 
duce more  revenue  in  other  ways. 
172 


THE  ESSENCE  OF  SUCCESS  173 

But  how  are  we  to  set  about  it?  Although  we 
are  making  some  headway  with  the  creation  of  new 
forests  through  the  wood-lot  proposition,  through 
the  town  forest  idea,  and  through  the  efforts  of  the 
lumber  and  paper  producers,  the  progress  in  these 
directions  is  still  slow.  If  I  pay  three  to  four  dol- 
lars an  acre  for  suitable  land  (much  of  it  could  be 
obtained  for  less),  spend  fifteen  dollars  more  per 
acre  for  planting  and  supervision,  and  add  four  per 
cent,  compound  interest  to  the  total,  the  cost,  with- 
out any  allowance  for  the  payment  of  taxes,  will 
amount  in  seventy-five  years  to  about  two  hundred 
dollars  per  acre,  or  fifteen  dollars  for  every 
thousand  feet  of  lumber  grown.  On  the  basis  of 
present  prices  such  a  proposition  would  hardly  pay, 
and  there  is  the  rub.  But  today's  basis  is  not  the 
deciding  factor.  During  the  last  seventy-five  years 
the  price  of  practically  all  grades  of  lumber  has 
nearly  trebled.  What  will  happen  in  the  next 
seventy-five  years  when  the  great  timber  resources 
of  the  west  as  well  as  the  south,  are  well-nigh  ex- 
hausted or  operated  under  some  plan  of  conserva- 
tive cutting  which  entails  greater  expense?  Many 
substitutes  will  doubtless  gain  a  hold  strong  enough 
to  considerably  decrease  the  per  capita  wood  con- 
sumption, but  new  uses  for  wood  are  being  contin- 
ually found,   the  population   is   increasing,   and   a 


174 


OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 


gradual  but  nevertheless  material  increase  in  the 
price  of  wood  products  will  be  unavoidable.  In  due 
proportion  to  its  necessity,  forest  growing  must  pay. 
From  the  point  of  view  of  the  private  individual 
or  corporation,  however,  the  first  step  unquestion- 


NOT  NOW.      WAIT  UNnu 

rourt  Fo«ear  is  flexor 
TO  oe  CUT 


:^  ^^^  is 


A  number  of  progressive    states    have    already    passed    legislation 
exempting,  or  assessing  at  a  nominal  value,  such  lands  as  are  being  held 
for  the  production  of  a  new  wood  crop. 

ably  involves  some  means  of  equalizing  the  accruing 
burden  of  taxation.  A  short  time  ago  a  lumber 
company  in  the  south  attempted  by  sparing  suf- 
ficient seed  trees  to  promote  a  natural  re-growth. 
After  the  completion  of  logging  operations  the 
local  tax  assessor  visited  the  property,  saw  trees 


THE  ESSENCE  OF  SUCCESS  175 

growing  thereon,  and  apparently  deciding  that  this 
was  productive  rather  than  unproductive  land, 
assessed  it  at  a  high  figure.  Appeal  was  in  vain. 
The  company  was  forced  to  cut  down  every  tree, 
large  and  small,  and,  since  the  cost  of  getting  out 
the  few  merchantable  logs  would  have  been  greater 
than  the  revenue  obtained,  they  were  simply  left  to 
rot  where  they  fell.  The  assessment  was  then  re- 
duced to  a  nominal  figure.  Instances  of  this  char- 
acter have  occurred  in  several  different  states. 
Massachusetts,  Pennsylvania  and  several  other 
progressive  commonwealths,  however,  have  already 
passed  legislation  assessing  at  a  nominal  value  or 
exempting  entirely  such  lands  as  are  either  naturally 
or  artificially  to  be  re-stocked,  and  providing  that 
when  the  new  wood  crop  is  eventually  obtained  the 
state  may  recoup  itself  by  taking  eight  or  ten  per 
cent,  of  its  value.  This  way  of  handling  the  prob- 
lem does  very  well  for  the  states  above  mentioned, 
wherein  the  gradual  cutting  of  the  forests  took 
place  simultaneously  with  a  great  increase  in  general 
manufacturing  which  could  be  taxed  in  turn,  but 
where  such  other  sources  of  revenue  are  lacking,  the 
problem  is  not  so  simple.  If  a  large  proportion  of 
the  lands  in  a  given  county  are  suitable  only  for 
timber  growing  and  cannot  be  taxed  until  the  crop 
matures,  the  main  source  of  public  revenue  is  cut 


176  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

off,  and  where  will  the  money  for  schools  and  roads 
come  from? 

In  Louisiana  all  timber  lands  are  classified  at 
fixed  periods  according  to  the  number  of  thousand 
feet  of  timber  per  acre  growing  thereon,  and  taxed 
accordingly.  If  any  person  owns  cut-over  land  suit- 
able for  tree-growing  and  is  willing  to  enter  into  a 
contract  whereby  he  is  to  carry  on  proper  reforesta- 
tion, the  state  in  turn  agrees  that  during  the  life  of 
that  contract  it  will  tax  the  property  only  as  bare 
land,  and  at  the  rate  in  effect  when  the  contract  was 
made.  That  this  scheme  is  workable  has  already 
been  shown  by  the  progress  in  reforestation  made 
by  one  of  the  large  Louisiana  lumber  companies, 
but  it  may  well  be  capable  of  some  revision.  More- 
over, the  permanency  of  the  idea  here  depends  upon 
the  outcome  of  a  race  between  forest  cutting  and 
forest  growing.  The  law  must  sufficiently  stimulate 
forest  growing  before  the  remaining  forests  are 
cut,  or  there  will  be  no  source  of  future  revenue.  A 
good  example  of  this  very  catastrophe  may  be  seen 
today  in  Michigan,  which,  through  non-adoption  of 
a  policy  to  encourage  forest  growing  on  its  cut-over 
area,  is  now  for  the  most  part  unable  to  collect 
anything  therefrom,  and  every  tax  period  finds  in- 
creasing thou«:.ands  of  acres  uselessly  advertised  for 
sale. 


THE  ESSENCE  OF  SUCCESS 


177 


Another  way  of  handling  this  problem  is  similar 
to  that  at  present  in  vogue  in  England.  All  land, 
whether  it  is  suitable  for  general  agriculture  or  only 
for  forest  growing,  is  assessed  on  the  basis  of  the 
average  rate  of  income  it  is  capable  of  producing. 


It  is  the  poorest  sort  of  economy  to  grow  trees  at  great  expense  and 
then  burn  on  the  rubbish  pile  more  than  half  of  the  wood  content. 


Not  the  sale  value  but  the  producing  capacity  is  the 
basis  of  taxation,  and  the  rates,  fixed  at  a  percentage 
of  this  possible  or  probable  revenue,  are  paid  by 
the  owner  whether  his  land  is  actually  worked  or 
not.     The  proponents  of  this  scheme  rightly  claim 


178  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

that  It  tends  to  keep  all  land  at  the  maximum  of 
production,  but,  verging  as  it  does  on  the  theory  of 
a  tax  on  income  rather  than  a  tax  on  real  estate, 
there  is  a  decided  element  of  guess  work  and  many 
opportunities  for  injustice  arise.  The  difficulty  of 
applying  it  to  our  own  idle  land  problem  is  that  we 
have  no  sufficiently  well  established  standards  of 
forest  production.  Lumber  prices  have  been  slowly 
rising  over  a  period  of  many  years;  we  believe  they 
will  continue  to  do  so,  but,  because  the  natural  law 
of  exhausting  supply  is  Interfered  with  by  many 
factors,  we  cannot  be  sure  just  what  to  expect. 
There  Is,  therefore,  no  one  solution  of  the  taxation 
question  applicable  to  the  whole  United  States. 
Separate  political  units  will  have  to  handle  the  prob- 
lem each  In  Its  own  way,  reconciling  so  far  as  possi- 
ble the  necessary  financial  requirements  with  a 
maximum  of  encouragement  to  timber  growing. 

Other  difficulties  arise  quite  aside  from  the  ques- 
tion of  taxation.  We  require  a  comprehensive  plan 
for  supplying  the  seedlings  to  be  planted,  and  a 
thorough  scientific  study  of  methods  of  reforesta- 
tion, with  a  view  to  meeting  the  varying  natural 
conditions  found  in  the  different  states.  The  nurs- 
ery or  seedling  problem  Is  Important  because 
comparatively  few  trees  can  be  grown  through  the 
sowing  of  seed  on  Idle  land — the  wastage  is  too 


THE  ESSENCE  OF  SUCCESS 


179 


great.  Nature  indeed  can  afford  to  follow  this 
method,  but  man  must  usually  sow  tree  seed  in 
specially  prepared  beds,   set  out   the   seedlings   in 


OF   THE 

imm^B 

B 

WOOD     IN   A    TREE 
THERE    IS- 
16.6%      W.9%    \a9t   10%       )0%   2.5Tc5.6%        Jj.5% 


mill 


TDP5.UMBJ    eARK  SAWKCRF  JLA85  EOOINfii  MI5C.  2CA-       LUMBER 
STUMPS  TRIMMINW       SOWING      ' 

THIS  33.5%  LUMBER 


PP00UCE5 
l&3%  17.2% 


■ 


WASTE  CLEAR 

CUTTINfi5 

If  THE  WOOD  IN  A  TREE  WERE  FULLY  UTILIZEQ.  THERE  WOULD  BE- 


II 


■« 


^^x<^w^,'-i-,,,>  ,-\v>-;r 


© 


S%    3%         25%  ©7^ 

STUMP   SEAS.  CLEAR  OIMEN-     AVAILABLE      FOR    PULP 
SION  STOCK  OR    DISTILLATION 


Lumbering  is  today  a  wasteful  operation. 


180  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

cultivated  ground,  and  not  until  they  are  two  or 
three  years  old  may  he  safely  transplant  them  to  a 
permanent  location.  The  most  efficient  nursery 
results  are  obtained  from  rather  large  scale  opera- 
tions conducted  by  experts  at  a  cost  which  private 
owners,  with  only  a  temporary  need  to  satisfy,  can 
hardly  afford.  The  seedling  supply,  therefore,  be- 
comes strictly  a  problem  for  some  central  body, 
preferably  the  state.  However,  the  national  gov- 
ernment has  also  a  particular  interest  in  encouraging 
tree  planting  by  all  the  people,  and  national 
cooperation  with  the  states  to  promote  the  best  and 
most  effective  nursery  methods  is  believed  to  be  the 
most  desirable  solution. 

Scientific  study  of  planting  methods  is  vitally 
necessary.  Where  should  pine  be  planted?  Where 
will  hardwoods  give  better  results?  Of  these 
general  classifications  what  particular  species  will 
best  thrive  in  any  given  locality?  With  effective  fire 
protection  three-fourths  of  our  cut-over  lands  will 
reforest  themselves,  and  perhaps  the  greatest 
problem  is  to  determine  where  not  to  plant  at  all 
but  let  Nature  attend  to  the  work  in  her  own  way. 
Should  the  brush  left  behind  by  previous  operations 
be  burned  or  merely  scattered?  Perhaps  it  will 
actually  pay  to  remove  it  entirely.  These  are  all 
questions    requiring    careful    experimentation    con- 


THE  ESSENCE  OF  SUCCESS  181 

ducted  by  some  central  body.  The  United  States 
Department  of  Agriculture  already  maintains  six 
Forest  Experiment  stations,  two  in  the  south  and 
four  in  the  west,  but  their  work  has  been  handi- 
capped by  insufficient  appropriations.  We  need  an 
extension  of  experimental  work;  in  particular  we 
need  one  or  more  stations  in  the  northeast  where 
the  reforestation  movement  is  gaining  considerable 
momentum.  The  expenditure  of  money  on  wrong 
methods  is  the  greatest  blow  at  true  progress. 

And  lastly  we  must  attempt  to  develop  a  market 
for  wood  now  wasted  during  the  processes  of  lum- 
bering and  manufacture.  It  is  the  poorest  sort  of 
economy  to  grow  trees  at  great  expense,  and  then 
throw  away  more  than  half  of  the  wood  content 
merely  to  obtain  a  few  good  boards.  Yet  that  is 
exactly  what  happens  today.  We  have  seen  that,  if 
the  lumber  industry  were  located  nearer  its  market, 
a  considerable  improvement  in  this  situation  would 
naturally  follow.  But  it  is  not  enough.  The  United 
States  Forest  Products  Laboratory  at  Madison, 
Wisconsin,  pays  a  great  deal  of  attention  to  the 
wood  utilization  problem  and  has  been  most  bene- 
ficial to  the  whole  country  through  its  experiments 
in  finding  new  ways  to  use  the  odds  and  ends  from 
logging  and  sawing  operations.  If  we  are  to  main- 
tain our  present  standards  of  living,  wood  prices 


182  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

must  be  kept  at  an  absolute  minimum,  and  to  do  so 
utilization  of  every  branch  and  twig,  of  every  slab 
and  sawdust  pile,  must  be  the  goal. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

A  Tree  for  a  Tree 

The  part  of  every  good  citizen. 

There  are  two  ways  of  handling  any  great  public 
problem — Revolution  and  Evolution.  Small  groups 
of  people  are  continually  planning  to  cure  all  the 
world's  evils  by  a  sudden  cataclysmic  change, 
wiping  out  all  the  old  and  beginning  upon  an 
entirely  new  basis.  They  become  quite  adept  at 
destruction,  but  the  mind  that  is  big  enough  to  con- 
struct a  complete  government,  or  even,  in  the  pres- 
ent complicated  commercial  system  of  the  world,  to 
evolve  in  its  entirety  a  permanent  forest  policy  for 
the  United  States,  has  not  yet  been  discovered. 

"Keep  out  fire  and  plant  trees!"  That  is  easy 
enough  to  say.  "It  is  not  up  to  us;  let  the  federal 
government  and  the  states  do  it."  Democratic 
government  will  not,  and  cannot,  take  action  unless 
a  united  public  opinion  demands  it.  Two  compre- 
hensive forestry  bills  have  already  been  introduced 
in  Congress  but  without  favorable  result.  Why? 
Because   as  to  methods  of  regulating  the  lumber 

183 


184  OUR  VANISHING  FORESTS 

industry,  as  to  the  problems  of  taxation  and  the 
details  of  forest  administration,  our  legislature 
simply  lacks  united  support  and  therefore  does  not 
know  how  to  proceed.  One  school  of  foresters  says 
"Do  this,"  another  "Do  that."  Unanimous  in  their 
desire  for  forest  conservation  and  extension,  our 
experts  cannot  agree  on  any  program  covering  the 
means  to  be  employed.  While  they  dispute,  forest 
destruction  continues. 

Forest  policy  or  no  forest  policy  you  and  I  must 
have  wood.  We  do  not  necessarily  have  to  choose 
blindly  between  warring  factions.  We  must  learn 
enough  of  the  fundamental  facts  to  demand  an 
effective  compromise.  No  one  now  disagrees  upon 
the  matter  of  the  fire  hazard;  fire  protection  is  a 
policy  in  itself.  No  one  now  disagrees  as  to  such 
extension  of  our  National  and  State  Forests  as  is 
clearly  practicable.  No  one  disagrees  as  to  the 
general  policy  of  encouraging  corporations,  towns 
and  private  individuals  to  plant  trees.  Is  your  own 
state  taking  action  along  these  lines?  Are  you  so 
whole-heartedly  in  favor  of  the  movement,  that  you 
are  willing  to  assume  your  share  of  the  responsibil- 
ity and  your  share  of  the  cost? 

There  are  245  million  acres  of  cut-over  forest 
land  widely  distributed  in  many  eastern  and  south- 
ern states.     Most  of  this  is  still  sparsely  timbered. 


A  TREE  FOR  A  TREE 


185 


but  in  addition  there  are  81  million  acres  of  land 
absolutely  denuded  and  idle.  Just  the  other  day, 
perhaps,  you  drove  your  car  through  one  of  these 
districts.  "How  terrible!"  you  exclaimed,  and 
passed  on  as  quickly  as  possible.    Your  state  or  your 


A  Forest  Policy  in  six  words— Keep  out  fire  and  plant  trees. 


town  could  probably  purchase  this  area  for  a  small 
sum,  plant  trees  again,  protect  the  land,  and  in  due 
time  begin  to  furnish  good  lumber.  Perhaps  a 
lumber  company  still  holds  title  to  that  waste.  That 
company  will  not  run  the  risk  of  re-planting  because 
you  or  your  friends  may  throw  out  a  half  burned 


186  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

cigar  and  set  the  underbrush  alight.  You  cannot 
force  others  to  grow  timber  for  your  benefit  unless 
you  are  willing  to  offer  your  cooperation  and  assist- 
ance to  the  extent  of  making  it  economically  prac- 
ticable for  them  to  do  so.  You  want  lumber 
without  having  to  pay  the  cost  of  bringing  it  across 
the  country.  Well  then,  you  must  put  yourself  in 
the  place  of  the  grower  and  permit  him  to  make  a 
safe  and  reasonable  profit. 

Perhaps  you  own  a  small  wood-lot  on  your  farm 
or  your  country  place  and  you  cannot  now  sell  its 
product  because  there  is  no  local  sawmill,  and  the 
lumber  yard  nearby,  accustomed  to  buy  Pacific 
Coast  timber  from  regular  wholesalers,  is  unwilling 
to  cater  to  your  "whim"  and  help  you  out.  Do  you 
therefore  clear  the  land  for  firewood  and  then 
neglect  it,  or  are  you  a  booster  for  the  town  forest 
movement  and  the  private  wood-lot  idea,  with  the 
knowledge  that,  if  others  are  confronted  with  your 
problem,  the  sawmill  and  the  market  are  bound  to 
come? 

A  few  years  ago  you  seldom  read  in  your  ordi- 
nary daily  papers  anything  about  wood  shortage  or 
forest  preservation,  yet  today  practically  every 
newspaper  in  the  United  States  declares  in  favor 
of  the  movement  for  the  perpetuation  of  our 
forests.     They  are  printing  articles  telling  of  the 


A  TREE  FOR  A  TREE 


187 


value  of  the  forests  to  our  people,  of  the  necessity 
of  forest  fire  protection,  forest  regrowth  and  re- 
planting; they  are  printing  editorials  regarding  pro- 
posed legislation,  and  they  are  asking  for  action  on 


Here  is  a  cartoon   taken   from  one  of  our  great  metropolitan   dailies 

showing  how  the  newspapers  of  the  country  are  conducting  educational 

work  for  a  forest  policy. 

a  forest  policy.  All  this  is  largely  the  result  of  an 
educational  campaign  now  conducted  by  the  Ameri- 
can Tree  Association,  which  has  as  members  many 
thousand  citizens  devoted  to  the  perpetuation  of 
our  forests.     During  1921   the  Chamber  of  Com- 


188  OUR  VANISHING   FORESTS 

merce  of  the  United  States  appointed  a  committee 
to  consider  the  whole  forest  problem.  That  com- 
mittee spent  many  weeks  investigating  various  con- 
ditions throughout  the  United  States;  it  held  public 
hearings  from  New  York  to  California,  and  lum- 
bermen, wood-users,  lawyers,  tax  experts  and 
economists  gave  testimony.  No  greater  opportunity 
ever  existed  to  acquaint  the  business  men  of  the 
country  with  the  true  state  of  our  forest  affairs. 

You  read  these  articles.  You  feel  that  you 
would  like  to  see  something  done,  that  you  would 
like  to  know  more  about  the  forest  problem,  but  you 
are  too  busy  to  pursue  that  knowledge.  Suppose 
that  when  you  were  in  school  you  had  been  taught, 
the  way  European  children  are,  the  importance  of 
the  forest,  and  the  fundamental  theory  of  growing 
wood  for  commercial  purposes.  There  would  be  no 
forest  problem  today.  Does  your  state  now  require 
in  the  public  schools  a  compulsory  course  on  the 
value  of  trees  and  how  to  protect  them?  Are  you 
an  active  backer  of  such  a  law? 

Federal  legislation  to  co-ordinate  the  efforts  of 
states,  towns  and  individuals  will  come  when  the 
whole  country  is  ready  for  it,  when  the  public  knows 
what  it  wants  and  unitedly  demands  it.  Books  and 
newspapers  must  continue  to  preach  forest  preserva- 
tion and  extension;  industries  and  advertisers  must 


A  TREE  FOR  A  TREE  189 

be  made  to  realize  that  they  have  an  important 
share  in  the  responsibility.  For  every  American  the 
goal  is,  in  short,  to  obtain  "a  tree  for  a  tree."  This 
is  the  battle  cry  of  the  homebuilder,  of  wood-users 
all  over  the  country,  and  this  is  the  slogan  which 
alone  can  assure  us  of  a  permanent  wood  supply. 
Let  us  individually  adopt  that  slogan  as  our  own. 


s 


